Thinking about the Contemporary City

Abstract

Our purpose here is to identify some topics concerned to the comprehension of the contemporary city. Therefore, through notions of time, velocity, obsolescence of places and things, innovation of science and technology we are able to approach different levels that seem to contribute to a redefinition of social-spatial relations present in the city nowadays. In methodological terms we can emphasize the importance of adopting, as a starting point, the historical knowledge considered here as the comprehension of reality itself. We believe as well that this is the mechanism that leads to the renewal of theory. The present modernity was established as a historical mark when the contemporary city was approached. The latter is characterized not on/y by the intense proliferation of objects, their abundance, but a/so by the rapidity in which these objects are processed and by the technical sophistication in which they are produced. We search through our analysis to observe how velocity and new rhythms, characteristic of the present moment remodel the urban surroundings, which tend to become obsolete in shorter intervals of time.