Clothing consumption practice and its impact on the transformation of “public space”. Vía primavera, El Poblado, Medellín

Abstract

[EN] Vía Primavera is a fashion district in El Poblado neighbourhood that has become a public referent of city life in Medellin – Colombia, a space that is shown as inclusive and accessible to all types of collectives. This paper is part of a research which purpose is to understand the connection between the public space with its moral and physical organization and the exclusion processes that the clothing conspicuous consumption generates in Via Primavera. The analysis of this connection is subjected to a mutual play between prior structure and agency and the crystallization, or not, of its existence through an interrelation. In the same way, a concern about the city models resumed in the national and local development plans, and its relevance as the ones that set the social and economic ideal of public spaces arises. An ideal that contradicts with practice, where exclusion processes through consumption practices bring a tension in what is supposed to be public, breaking with its inclusive and collective character