Emotion, geography and heritage, experience to redefine the urban space in Valparaíso (Chile)

Abstract

The management of a heritage city, puts in dialogue economic development, cultural diversity and marginalization, where a “geography of emotions” opens new ways of understanding its value. The paper explores how the memorial heritage in sector La Matriz -an stigmatized neighborhood and with an incipient gentrification- organizes a map in urban space that differs on how the local authorities see it. The recovery of its memory as a working model, allowed to resignfy the immaterial value of his landscape. The stories of life connected the inhabitants with their territory. A new map emerged where there is a duality: Two neighborhoods that coexist one from the day and one at night, one from the past and one in the present. When the foreigner accesses this register, he can look otherwise at the landscape and local management takes a sense of greater sustainability in the territory.