Feminist Practices of Urban Care: The Rooting of Care Ethics in Montevideo

This work is part of a broader reflection on the relationship between the city, gender, production, reproduction, social justice and the tensions that cross these interconnected spheres. By adopting a feminist perspective and considering urban space as a projection of social, economic and political power dynamics, our analysis overexposes the historical concealment of social reproduction and the increasingly violent erosion of the right to the city.
Starting from these critical assumptions, the study explores how a place-based ethics of care can stimulate a renewed reflection on the urban and become the cornerstone of an alternative paradigm, capable of rethinking public policies and planning urban space according to a relational logic that privileges everyday life. Following a brief genealogy of the concept of Care, the contribution will question how this perspective can be integrated into urban planning and public policy-making processes. In this regard, the case of Montevideo emerges as particularly significant. Indeed, in the Uruguayan capital, the public administration - in close dialogue with feminist collectives - has defined and implemented a strategy to territorialise care, embracing this ethical perspective within its public policies. The analysis of this experience, which is also relevant for its feasibility and replicability, makes it possible to outline imaginaries and practices for creating more liveable and equitable cities, able to recognise the centrality of social reproduction and respond to everyday needs. The study wishes to contribute to the contemporary debate on care, weaving a new narrative on the urban, in which the city is understood first and foremost as a complex organism and a shared platform, where social relations, sedimented in space, are constitutive.