Living during the pandemic: social representations about house, neighbourhood and city in inhabitants of the peri-urban area of Mar del Plata

Abstract

In the article, I compare the representations about house, neighbourhood and city, made by inhabitants of popular and closed urbanizations located in the southern peri-urban area of the city of Mar del Plata, within the framework of social isolation measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I propose that, in times of confinement, spatial meanings are reconfigured, generating significant contrasts between social classes and genders. I show how, from these scales, the unequal ways of inhabiting and experiencing the city can be problematized by people who inhabit peri-urban areas. Living in dissimilar and nearby urbanizations, spatial representations are crossed not only by unequal access to infrastructure, goods and services, but also by people's ability to move, the knowledge to manage permits and cross checkpoints. Thus, the scales house, neighbourhood and city emerge as key categories to understand the experience of inhabiting the city from the peri-urban.