Cultural heritage, urban centrality and “city model”

Abstract

With some exceptions, the urban planning instruments doesn´t incorporate a joint vision about how urban cultural
heritage problems are enrolled into the objectives, strategies and city planning projects. We wonder if that heritage
marginalization in urban planning doesn´t have to be related to deterioration processes, progressive abandonment
and built heritage destruction. Our aim is to reflex on urban heritage roll in the reorganization of the city, mediated
by its symbolic function to the question of centrality s) and sociospatial structuring. The hypothesis sets out that,
in the process of deconstruction of heritage, urban centrality is at stake, understood as well as a physical space
(the “center”), as well a socio spatial relationship. The methodology starts from the literature review of two urban
models: “progressive” and “culturalist” by Françoise Choay, furthermore the reflection of the paradigm of sustainability
contained into one of the models, creating a reflective construct that commits around the concern of Mexico City´s
polycentricity. The results fall entirely on a reflection that combines issues that impact in the growth of the city, such
as the historic centers governance with the political action of the new “urbanism”. It is up for discussion that the city
shouldn´t grow spatially, in contrast, with the impossibility of holding back the growth of housing demand and whether
“sustainable” urban planning doesn´t actually constitute an update of Choay´s “culturalist model” or if, we are facing
a new paradigm of how to rethink the city today..