Seeking other urban possibilities: Community production of space in a Global South city

Abstract

This work reflects on certain ways of producing space through hybridization of some global urban development trends and some local cultural expressions. Its purpose is to contribute to the conception of models of urbanization that make participation something more than a subordinated inclusion, whose aspiration is not to assimilate and dominate the other’s potentialities, but to collectively produce a city as a ‘meeting place’ where its value in use becomes a priority. Here, we study the process of occupation, eviction, dispossession, and concealment of two experiences of production of urban space in a Global South city: Rosario (Argentina). We focus on the Paraná River waterfront, the home of two collective subjects: okupas (Spanish word for squatter) and local artisanal fishermen. Both communities presented alternative ways of producing and imagining urban space and brought up the need to generate differences from the corporate tendencies that commodify the city, its culture, and its ways of life. They also collectively came up with new forms of producing and sharing knowledge in order to strengthen their self-organized communities. Through their practices and everyday resistance, they showed alternative possible paths and futures in a genealogy and a cartography of the urban present.