What is considered urban in the contemporary world

Abstract

Contemporary life central concepts such as politics, civilization and citizenship, derive from the city form and organization. A city conveys labor socio-spatial division, thus Henri Lefebvre
proposes to think its transformation on the basis of a continuum that extends from the political city to the urban environment, when and where it completes its countryside domination. The city’s transformation into urban environment
was marked by an industrial takeover that brought power to production and to working class. The city, as the surplus, power and fiesta locus, as well as a privileged scenario of social
reproduction, was thus subordinated to the industrial logics. The city thus experienced a double process: its centrality imploded upon itself and its outskirts exploded upon the surrounding areas through the urban tissue, which carries within it the polis and civitas germ. Therefore, the urban praxis, formerly
restricted to the city, has now re-politicized the social space as a whole. In Brazil, urban environment had its origin in the military government concentrating and integrating politics that followed Vargas’s centralization and expansionism, and Kubitschek’s developmental interiorizing. Today, the urbanindustrial process virtually imposes itself on all social space through the extended urbanization of our days