Resumo

BLANCO, Ismael; FLEURY, Sonia  e  SUBIRATS, Joan. New Insights to Old Problems: Urban Peripheries and Social Transformation. Gest. polít. pública [online]. 2012, vol.21, n.spe, pp.3-40. ISSN 1405-1079.

The main goal of this special edition is to analyze and to assess the nature and scope of social participation, in its different meanings, in the context of urban peripheries in Spain and Mexico. More concretely, this article permits to identify and to justify the empirical and theoretical relevance of the three main themes that articulate this special edition: urban peripheries, social participation and new institutional frameworks. We highlight the great socio-political heterogeneity of urban peripheries. We contextualize the current emphasis on social participation in the frame of an in-depth reconsideration of traditional state-society relations. We stress the political and ideological diversity of community participation practices. And, finally, we state the difficulty of this type of practice to build a new institutionality, alternative to the dominant one.

Palavras-chave : urban peripheries; urban segregation; social transformation; participation; urban governance.