La ciudad moderna y el nuevo espacio público

Abstract

In this essay, we propose to analyse the great transformations of the modern city that gave rise to a new public space. The feeling of estrangement, anonymity and the crowd are the essential aspects of modern life in the big city. Modernity has given way to two visions of public space: first, that arising from the enlightened project that consists in making a public use of reason. Second, the appearance of the urban masses that destroy, in the words of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, the traces of individual identity.