Love and Disaffection for the City

A Reflection from the Perspective of Urban Imaginaries

Abstract

The article reflects on the city as a lived space and a symbolic framework through the feelings of love and disaffection it may evoke in its inhabitants and in the collective imagination. From this perspective, the city ceases to be merely a physical space and becomes an object imbued with meanings, memories, desires, and emotions. The author analyzes the affective relationship between citizens and their urban environment, as well as the ways in which images of the city can generate identification, well-being, attraction, rejection, or uprootedness. Disaffection is associated with processes of destruction, fragmentation, and transformation of urban structures, particularly when buildings, spaces, and landmarks that form part of collective memory disappear. In contrast, love for the city is constructed through images, sensory experiences, ways of life, and cultural practices that foster citizens' identification with their environment. Finally, the article argues that understanding the city's physical and cultural reality requires incorporating its symbolic and affective dimensions into urban studies and viewing urbanism as a shared endeavor linked to the construction of a multidimensional identity.