Resumen de The psychological context in the contemporaneous city

Baltasar Fernández Ramírez

• The author presents a panoramic vision of the historic and conceptual evolution of certain key issues in urban studies: city size, the urban space, the concept of urbanite and citizen, and the ideal model city. The proposals of 19th Century sociologists and the Chicago School have given way to a postmodern form of urbanism, which highlights the ideas of the global city, outsourcing, gated residential suburbs and themed quarters, political agents and territoriants, fortified garden cities and futuristic dystopian scenarios. New urbanism (exemplified by the Los Angeles School) challenges the psychology of the city and imposes the need to renew language, perspectives, epistemology and professional practices. Ecology and postmodernist constructionism are two theoretical frameworks that merge and overlap in the different contributions made to this special issue about Urban environment and behaviour.