Community care without common imaginaries: the challenge of understanding the proposals of 'caring cities' from the social representations of urban coexistence

Abstract

This article proposes an approach to the imaginary that is constructed in the social understanding of a city that is cared for and cares for its citizenship, exploring whether the conceptual commitment to community care in the city can be understood within the hegemonic social representations that the population holds in this regard. Through a qualitative approach, we have explored the ways in which coexistence in the city is understood and the role that care and community play in it. The analysis of the discourses reveals a widespread understanding of a broken social bond that encourages the demand for institutional mediation between individuals and suspends the possibility of building community networks in an urban setting that fosters a shared perception of threat and distrust. These results suggest the need to address the reflection on the obstacle that hegemonic ideological frameworks pose for community initiatives that give meaning to urban coexistence in our culture.