Obstáculos epistemológicos en urbanismo

Urbanism knowledge is constantly growing, which makes it prone to fundamental errors that should be regularly revised. Without such revision there is a chance for an anarchy of concepts and methods and, therefore, of theories. Thus, the epistemology becomes a tool useful to value the scientific cogency developed by the specialists in each discipline: the urbanism studies are not –and should not be– an exception. To do so, the epistemological obstacles suggested by Gaston Bachelard (2000) were used together with the dialectic method to evaluate different paradigms in urbanism studies and to show the need to use the complex sciences in order to distance the definitions of the urban and the city through the material and the intangible. In addition, this paper posits the need to reevaluate what is being understood as urban sustainability and as public space. The latter includes all the epistemological obstacles stated above.