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The Beach Front (la rambla): Reality, Promise and Illusion of Democracy in Today's Montevideo

As the title of the conference for which this work was originally written suggests (‘Negotiating the Streets’), and as Henri Lefebvre (1991) has reminded us, space – and the urban space in particular – is not a given, not a non-human, non-historical fact of nature, but an artefact, a social and historical product. It is a product both in physical terms (as it is made of materials, forms, textures, motifs) and in terms of the uses, social functions and meanings we allocate to or associate with that space. This social production of the public space (its forms, its uses, its meanings) as well as the cultural practices and institutions that are built upon it, in turn, are also the result of the interaction, negotiation and conflict between social groups and cultural projects that exist and are part of any given society and national culture. As David Harvey (1985) and others remind us, the city becomes ‘a place of contest’ (Orum and Chen, 2003: 19) and ‘a window for understanding not only urban life, but for also understanding the new forms and avenues for class struggles’ (p. 43). Sometimes this negotiation takes an open, conscious, verbally and politically articulated form. For example, a group of citizens organize to promote or to demand the construction of a particular kind of locale; or to protest the construction of a highway, the modification of a square, the demolition of a historical site; or to ensure that a particular place is properly shaped and furnished. Another group vindicates their right to access and make other use of a given place. Yet another seeks and manages to produce a certain meaning and narrative vis-à-vis a particular site. Sometimes, such groups act in a very organized fashion, other times less so, with the result that the production of space in the latter cases is more an effect of their spatial practices (De Certeau, 1984) and other cultural practices that gradually alter the character