| In the context of a Post-Modern age, with the decay of old paradigms and the emergence of new ones, it seems appropriate to re-examine the way man-made places are being built. On the one hand, urban growth concentrates population and economical resources in few places, producing high regional imbalances. Many places throughout the world are on the verge of ecological disaster. Most third world countries present high economic and residential segregation in urban and rural places. Globalization superimposes the same models onto different cultures, substituting uniform worldwide patterns for local characteristics. Modern architecture has been criticized for not producing meaningful contexts. All this has given origin to an anonymous "placelessness". On the other hand, the different disciplines whose concern is man-made places seem to be separated. Philosophers, politicians, geographers, sociologists, urban planners, and architects approach the phenomenon of place only from their particular point of view, producing a fragmented result.; This dissertation proposes an integrative approach that considers man-made places in all their implications in human affairs. This study adopts a phenomenological standpoint searching for the essences of phenomena as they present to consciousness and experience; and an anthropological-structuralist stance, in the sense that man's innate perception and re-creation of the world derive from subconscious structures formed by binary oppositions.; In its first part, this work shows that when the built environment is considered as real "Loci" (the integrative view of man-made places) we find oppositions such as openness-closedness, conservation-consumption, natural-artificial, organic-rational, centralism-federalism, integration-segregation, introversion-extroversion, urban-rural, global-local, sacred-profane, high-low, Genius loci-Zeitgeist, and attachment-detachment. These structures of place are essential and valid for all Loci and reflect the structures that pervade the whole field of human culture.; In the second part, the theoretical framework is applied to a particular region in the Mexican Highlands, using ethnography and cartography as the fieldwork method. Four major tendencies are identified in that region in terms of binary oppositions: increasing segregation, pervading centralism, relativistic urbanization, and timeless Genius loci.; The conclusion suggests that structural phenomenology may be considered as a viable common ground for the different disciplines that are responsible of the built environment. |
