Public opinion, Town planning and citizen participation

The consolidation of public opinion as an extra-institutional sphere endowed with political functions and legitimacy and the growing complexity and scale of cities motivate reflection on the role of the press and other media in the area of urban policy. The proposal may seem obvious, but it has not received adequate academic or political attention. We then proposed an analysis on the participation of media actors in the urban environment, in particular in the development of participatory urbanism. The press becomes a control mechanism for planning and as a foundation for civic education, therefore, as a fundamental vector of urban public opinion. In this context we define the possible functions of media in the urban environment, beyond their work as sources of information, democratic surveillance and co-producers of a media genius loci.