Urban social interactions, representations of the city and society, and citizen consciousness

What kind of social interaction (Giddens, 2001, Berger and Luckmann, 2004) the public and private urban spaces promote (Jacobs, 2001)? These are interactions that stimulate the instrumental action, communicative action or action based on tradition (Habermas, 1984, 1989; Weber, 1969)? These interactions are manipulated by the economy and politics (Cohen and Arato, 2001), or interactions are aimed at qualifying the opinion (Habermas, 1997) related to the welfare and urban way of life? Urban spaces that promote instrumental interaction, traditional interaction, or communicative interaction produce subjectivities that have different representations (Moscovici, 2003, Durkheim, 2004), of city and urban society, which guide the action of the actors. These representations may value the private use of urban space and the relations of production and consumption, as desired qualities for the city and urban society, or enhance public use and the creation of social spaces that promote the construction of civic values ​​and a citizen conscience. The interactions that predominate in urban society define the representation of the city and urban society that society handles in the private and public spheres (Habermas, 1984, 1997). To evaluate the "democratic density" of the local public sphere is necessary to investigate how it produces the opinion and will of the public, which in contemporary society is a plural public (Thompson, 2002), and seek to identify the presence of communicative interaction, characterized by goals and practices for the construction of autonomous individuals and citizen consciousness. The search for interactions that predominate in groups allows us to evaluate its potential democratizing and their ability to contribute to the transformation of urban society.
Keywords: urban social interactions, representation of the city, citizen consciousness, urban subjectivities.