First we took the streets. Urban storytelling for alternative futures.

Abstract

Cities in the Global South have been undergoing stressful processes of rapid urbanization. In Latin America, urban development has followed global neoliberal, capitalistic, economic and political interests together with idealized western models of urbanization which led to misunderstanding and underestimating its own processes, challenges and urban dynamics. Specially in fast-growing cities in Mexico sprawl has become the urban dynamic. The city of Queretaro grew 17.6 times its size in the past 47 years. The urban dynamic of its urban sprawl was urban fragmentation and intensive privatization of urban spaces which have left 79.9% of its urban areas with no access to public spaces.

One side effects of this unequal social process are the urban borders — ambiguous spaces between existing and new urban development. Urban borders exhibit a strong social agency as people rede ne their function by appropriating the space through informal practices. As cities continue to expand, former urban borders become contested spaces where several interests meet. Most im- portantly, empowered by their unique stories and urban narratives, urban borders have the capacity of becoming socially resilient spaces and withstand the pressure of privatization and gated communities.

This thesis looks at urban borders as sites with a potential to develop social resilience, a capacity to maintain the social life of a space regardless of external forces. It approaches the topic through two case studies in Queretaro, Mexico, to understand how social production of space happens through non-official stories and shared narratives. It also looks at stories as a way to uncover the hidden political, economic and historical motives that affect the development of urban borders. This interplay between social production and social construction of space is analyzed in the work using Lefebvre’s spatial triad.

The study demonstrates that for urban borders in growing cities, stories can become catalysts of change. In both of the case studies, non-official stories helped create social resilience, improve place attachment and crystalize spatial identity. Urban storytelling presented bring forward a richer understanding of the social and physical conception of borderline spaces appropriated through informal practices. While the first case study (San Pablo) shows a negative effect of discarding local narratives on new development, the second case (Hercules) highlights that it is possible to harness the power of social resilience by building on the shared stories and imaginaries.