The lived space. Towards a radically urban ethnography

Abstract

With this essay I try to define a methodology for urban ethnography “in it’s own terms” but not without first problematizing its object of study. Historically, the urban thing has either been understood as a consequence of industrial society and therefore prefigured in the economic structure, or as a consequence of urban planning and therefore prefigured in the Architect's project. When the urban thing has had a differential status, it has been in anomic terms as in the case of Simmel or in pastoral terms as in the case of the Chicago School. This essay is divided into three parts: an attempt to define the urban as “lived space”, a series of onto-epistemological reflections with the intention of creating a methodological framework for urban ethnography and a last part with a series of techniques for approaching the urban thing. Closer to a nonconformist manifesto than to a manual, I propose, ultimately, that the urban is that elusive part of the city experience, and, therefore, requires methods that are consistent with its irreducibility.