Pachuca: in search of lost space

Enid Adriana Carrillo Moedano
Master in Sustainable Urban Development

"In the cities you can find clocks that stop at the last glass, the moon over a cab and all the poems I write to you" mentions the Spanish poet Luis García Montero to define the immensity of the things that happen in a city and that attract us to it without remedy. For centuries, thinking about cities has led us to imagine the promise of progress, of better opportunities, of the future.

Today, more than four billion people live in cities, and according to the United Nations (UN), by 2050, two-thirds of the world's population will live in one. When we use the word city, we refer to a settlement in a territory that allows the life of a large number of people in conditions of closeness and proximity.

The city functions as a stage for the development of all the activities of our life and we can recognize it through the places that make it up, which are defined under a concept born of architecture and urbanism known as "public space".

What is public space?

Urban public space is a concept that explains the role of places in the life of a city. It refers to the squares, parks, gardens and other freely accessible spaces in which its inhabitants meet in their daily activities and which form a fundamental part of coexistence and the sense of belonging to a given territory.

Urban public space can be studied from different disciplines such as architecture, urban planning and social sciences that allow us to analyze it in terms of its image, the way it is built, managed and what it means for people's lives in a cultural and symbolic sense.

Why study it?

These spaces have great relevance in the practices of the population and have become an object of study and action for the global agenda of international organizations and research centers.

Due to the importance of these spaces in citizen life, as a student of the PhD in Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo (UAEH), I conducted the research entitled "Urban public space in the city of Pachuca: an analysis of its uses and appropriations".

The main objective of the research is to analyze the way in which people use public spaces in the city and identify their practices in order to determine whether or not they meet the needs of the population and in what aspects they can improve in the future.

What is the focus of this research?

The research focuses on the study of three different places, Plaza Constitución located in the center of the city, known for being a central space of deep-rooted practices; the Ciclopista Río de las Avenidas, for being the only linear park in Pachuca with a clear sports use and the neighborhood park Parque Urbano San Antonio that belongs to a new generation of places that were built from the growth in the south of the capital of Hidalgo in the nineties.

Analyzing these places will allow us to obtain information about the uses and problems that occur in different parts of the city and that respond to different needs, since an inhabitant does not use a park near his house in the same way as a central plaza that he rarely attends.

How to study public space?

The tools for the study of these places are diverse and complementary. In my case, I will apply a perception survey to identify how users perceive these public spaces based on aspects such as awareness and experience of the place, desired and undesired interactions, participatory behavior and sense of familiarity.

At the same time, I will use an observation guide designed with the support of the thesis director, Dr. Jesús Enciso González, research professor at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities of the UAEH and researchers from the Institute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies of Barcelona (IERMB) who analyze the physical characteristics of the spaces in terms of their thermal conditions, noise level, space occupation, urban landscape, sense of security and urban design.

This will be complemented with interviews with the main people responsible for the management, design and maintenance of the city's squares, parks and gardens in order to have a broad overview of how public space works in a municipality like ours.