A New Vision Regarding Spatial Tensions in Urban Design

Together with the urban movements from the 1970s, the 1980s or the contemporary ones, with conflicts regarding the right to the city, social emancipation, political oppression or environmental issues, a different kind of conflict is also entangling the contemporary city: spatial tensions. It is a weaker but more persistent form of conflict happening in any city’s everyday life between opposing forces. Far away from violent conflicts and riotous surges, contemporary tensions are usually hidden, sometimes implicit or explicit: the opposing forces do not turn into a struggle but remain noiselessly and dynamically tense. Also if such a specific form of conflict is many times weak and invisible, it generates strong and relevant transformations of the city: spatial tensions are represented by minute, continuous, overlaid, dilated over time and still in progress modifications of space.