Spatial Practices: Architecture, Planning and Citizenship in Mexico City

Abstract

This study questions the view that privileges planning professionals with the right and responsibility of building the city. Instead, it brings social movements, everyday practices and a cultural politics to the foreground of a study of architecture understood simultaneously as a profession, a built form and a way of life.

The study of spatial practices in Mexico City, in conjunction with a reading of Lefebvre, presents the concept of space as a potential site for articulating a social/ecological project through planning and architecture in light of a democratisation of the planning process and a politicisation of urban spaces.