La ciudad hispanoamericana fragmentada versus su sostenibilidad

Abstract

The Hispanic-American city, with its structural, long-lasting, and characteristics features is going through deep changes in its urban design and in its internal functioning scheme. From a simple model of its social-functional-spatial structure, it becomes a patchwork of functions, architectural designs and levels of service. The city appears to be ever more fragmented in its urban tissue, takes the shape of fragments separated from a space held together by almost nothing and representing new grounds for urbanization. The purpose of this article is identifying the main determinants for the fragmentation of the Hispanic-American geographical space. For that, this research employed a qualitative methodology combined with the analysis of the spatial processes occurred within the last five decades in the Hispanic-American cities. The findings of this work indicate that the main determinants of the fragmentation in the geographical space are the friction and the psychological, social and economic distance. Therefore, it requires an integral urban policy that smooth the fragmentation in these cities.