La ciudad y el río: Otro diálogo interrumpido

Abstract

This research is a first approach, with more questions than answers, from the perspective of cultural studies, to the abnormal relation between the city and the river, in the specific case of Barranquilla and the Magdalena River (Colombia).

This research attempts to analyze and interpret different aspects of the reality of this relationship (city-river) as a way to understand a phenomena of a wide cultural range that has not yet been studied from this perspective in the various works, about the city, accomplished during the last few years. The implications of this "un-encounter" between the city and the river, after four decades of a harmonic relationship that led to an important development in many aspects of the national life, represents today a cultural, social, political and economic problem with unsuspected consequences in the present and future of the city. This is also true in rms of real spatiality, non recognition of the essential values of landscape, deficiencies related to conviviality and quality of life, and healthy construction of identity, citizenship and sense of belonging.