Reassembling the City or How Social and Tourism Studies can Influence the Geo-Social-Anthropological Narrative

Abstract

The present work seeks to expose some ways of spatial appropriation in the tourist area of the thirteenth commune in Medellín, Colombia. This recognition is made from the relation that people have with the place, in regards to its spatial organization, the arrangement of furniture in space and its urban insertion. Likewise, the methodological approach that is proposed is of a qualitative nature and the empirical field work is limited to the narrative universe with which it seeks to explain what makes a place familiar and for whom that place is familiar, which leads to reveal the degrees of integration and deterrence that exist in space.

In this context, the objective of this document is focused on identifying what have been the sociocultural impacts in the buffer area caused by tourist activity. For this, the theory of inhabiting, key informants from the tourist tours  that are offered, participant observation and interviews with different actors of the place that allowed a compilation of data and testimonies that they paid for the critical review are analyzed. The conclusions show that there is not only a before and after, or a single image capable of encompassing the entire commune, which if it exists are ways of seeing and narrating commune thirteen, in the same way regional tourist and territorial policies favor development for native communities, but there are still levels of social inequality and socio-spatial polarization. Not all is lost in commune thirteen in Medellín, Colombia; since the graffiti of various national and international artists testifies and commemorates what has been lived in the neighborhood as a core point of permanent social-spatial transformation.