Uses and disuses of public space: Consequences of a civilizing aesthetic

Abstract

This article is the result of an investigation carried out in La Matriz parish of the city of Ambato - Ecuador, which aims to reflect on the existing consequences in the uses and disused of public space from the implementation of a civilizational aesthetic in the planning of cities. It is based on the need to understand the divorce between the urban planning of municipal bodies and the imaginaries built in the communities around public spaces. The methodological approach consists of the application of an ethnography of community sense in eight public spaces to understand the historical community uses of the spaces, as well as the disused to which they have been subjected from works of urban transformation.  The analysis allows us to reflect in a political key on the need to homogenize public space, and, therefore, understand public space as an instrument of the ideological discourse of capitalism.