Abstract

BENITEZ GONZALEZ, Oscar Gabriel. Epistemological approaches to complexity in urban research. Intersticios sociales [online]. 2017, n.14, pp.77-120. ISSN 2007-4964.

This article proposes a contribution to the formulation of an alternative visión of urban research based on an epistemological perspective that rescues the attributes of complexity that define the city as an object of study.

Through this epistemological dimension, the essay examines the key methodological challenges for urban researchers who face the varied manifestations of the complexity of the city, including: the multidimensional nature of this object of study, movement and nonlinear temporalities, systemic causality, and the structural and functional heterogeneity of the entities studied, among other attributes that are defined here as a series of complexity vectors.

These vectors are analyzed one-by-one, but without losing sight of their interrelationships.

The study concludes that it is necessary to find links that interrelate the vast and various signs of complexity of the urban phenomenon with the potential pathways upon which research into these topics can continue the construction of an epistemology for the specific complexity of the city and the urban that is still in process.

Keywords : complexity vectors; epistemological reflection; nonlinear movement; heterogeneous temporalities; systemic determinism.

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