CHAPTER 01 | INTRODUCTION
Problem Definition.
It can always be identified that public spaces are never the same, they change alongside their environment and society. They represent a snapshot of a particular place and time. While observing the users interact with the spaces, it is possible to learn from their spatial nature and socio-cultural context of its users. Public spaces (also addressed in this dissertation as PS) are funded with public money by the government, said money proceeds from the taxes that citizens pay; therefore, those spaces belong to the citizens, but why doesn’t everybody have the same access to them? To what extent is the spatial segregation responsibility of the local authorities, society, and designers? How can appropriation be a way of expressing, protesting, and denoting the inequality within different social groups? Leon is a city in central Mexico with a land area slightly above 1,200 km2 (Municipio de León, 2021), and with about 2 million inhabitants in the metropolitan area (INEGI, 2015). According to the Municipal Institute of Planning (IMPLAN 2020), in the city there are 300 ha of PS; however, the characteristics and the quality of them may not be uniform throughout different zones in Leon. The issue does not seem to be exclusively found in this city. The presence of a connection between income, accessibility, and features of the PS, has been suggested by authors such as Jordi Borja and Zaida Muxí. (2003). Unmeasured urban sprawl, amongst other factors, affects mainly those who are less privileged. The areas where they live lack basic services and infrastructure, consequently these areas experience a rise in urban violence that in the long term affects the rest of the city. In theory, all citizens should have the same opportunities to cover their basic human needs; in reality, growing cities often ignore their most vulnerable inhabitants. By understanding how cities have been developed and how people interact with them, urban planners, designers and architects can identify the needs that the society is trying to cover in PS and the elements that attach, or not, citizens to them. To conduct this research, the first part is about the analysis of how different typologies of PS are distributed in certain polygons of the city. By typologies, it will be understood as the different types of PS that share common characteristics; and by polygons, it will be referred to as delimited areas with similar morphological and social conditions. The second part is about how these spaces are appropriated and perceived by its users.
DIY PUBLIC SPACES: Self- production of Public Space in Leon, Mexico.
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