Public space and political space. The city as the place for participation strategies

Abstract

This paper intends, after a brief look on the historic meaning of the city, to situate it in the environment of the Theory of the Human Needs, arguing how the city has been the most important synergic satisfactor of human needs.  Considering that needs are universal and identifiable, the city is the best place where these needs have been satisfied, and how one of them, participation, obtains a special meaning given its synergic and transversal character.  Nevertheless, the overflow of the city with the development of capitalism has dismembered it, zoning its functions and segregating the different social groups, loosing public space as political space.  Reconstructing an urban democracy,  needs a (re) return to the city considering multiple dimensions of change which are at the same time conditions and practical symptoms in order to reconstruct the public space as political space.