Abstract

COSTA, Aldenilson; KRAUS, Lalita  and  OLIVEIRA, Fabiana. Spatial context: an alternative for studies on cities. GOT [online]. 2018, n.13, pp.109-123. ISSN 2182-1267.  https://doi.org/10.17127/got/2018.13.005.

The historical process, the actions of the different actors and the centrifugal and centripetal forces acting on the territory contribute to format a spatial context, which concerns the conditions, material and immaterial, physical and human, orbiting around a certain spatiality. The spatial context is a product of socio-spatial formation, combines different dimensions: economic, political, social, cultural; at the same time that it conditions impulses and guides the uses of the territory. In cities, the spatial context contributes to evidence, to reveal and to understand the different space practices, from those of the hegemonic actors, to those realized in the daily life of the citizens. It should be noted that the spatial context is an element of space relegated to a secondary plane in spatial theory, and only recently is present in some analyzes of the territory, and especially of the cities, ensuring the transition from a causal relation to the understanding of that events and actions are contextual. In this sense, the approach here is to carry out theoretical nature, whose starting point is the definition of what we are calling a spatial context. For this, we consider the reading from the Alternative Economic Geography and the Critical Space Theory from which we analyze the spatial context and its relation with the historical context. Then, from the criticism of the analogy with the environment, we present specificities of the concept of spatial context associated with the space practices that take place in different cities.

Keywords : spatial context; territory; urban studies; globalization.

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