Participatory Urban Design of Public Space. A tool for social appropriation

Latinoamerica's traditional urbanism is recognized by excluding regular citizen's opinions. Moreover, only proposals from professionals and those sectors of government with decision-making power seems to be implemented. Through a literature review, this paper exposes two ways of conceiving urban designs: with citizen participation, and without citizen participation. As a result, the importance of citizen participation is considered as a way of making public space projects their own. This raises the need of involving the population in the earliest stage of urbanism projects, since citizens are the final consumers and the ones who know better their needs in relation to the to-be-created spaces.