The revindication of the historical urban landscape through public space. The downtown of Ciudad Juárez as a symbolic scenario of analysis

Abstract

The interest of this article is to address the revindication of the historic urban landscape through public space and its relationship with practices and imaginary with the intention of establishing the importance of including these elements when questioning the ways in which it is intervened, perceived and preserves the historical urban landscape. To this end, 32 in-depth interviews have been carried out in two types of different actors related to the downtown of Ciudad Juárez, which, through discourse analysis, have allowed emphasizing the tangible and intangible aspects that endow the historical center with meaning in the public space, social practices and urban imaginary. Among the main findings, it stands out that the implementation of public spaces in the downtown area of the city that in relation to the assignment of meanings to certain heritage buildings, allows to expand the dynamics of interaction in said space, resulting in the generation of places and practices that are oriented to the link with the patrimonial character assigning positive values to the ways of perceiving the center and therefore the historic urban landscape.