An urban pedagogy or the implicit pedagogy of urban spaces

The city narrates and its architectural structures convey their functions, their wealth, their power and sacredness. They can also tell a tale of violence and fear, of the logic of power, of discrimination and denial. They transmit information, implicit messages that shape and form, giving life to that “conditioning power” or “unconscious influence of the environment” which signifies pervasiveness and performativity or education. Cities, then, are potentially educational, but they can also be miseducational when they are at the service of anti-democratic and anti-educational logic. They can impoverish and transmit messages of hate, violence and discrimination by colonizing the minds and hindering reflective and creative thinking. Space, is then, a "pedagogical operator" which, in the wake of Foucauldian pedagogy, is able to influence the educational process, starting from the implicit pedagogy that insinuates itself into a structure, thus making it the daily spokesperson for ideologies.