La otra ciudad: una lectura narrativa de la experiencia urbana

Abstract

This research explores a city that is rarely heard: the one narrated by young people when they tell what they have lived. Not the organized city of urban plans or the one taught in school curriculum, but the city that is known through the body, memory, and everyday ways of caring, moving, and staying alert. A city that is not easy to explain, but that leaves marks. The study is framed within narrative research and was carried out with young students from a public school in the location of Bosa, Bogotá. Through the writing of micro-stories and the close accompaniment of their narrative processes, spaces were opened for urban experience to be expressed without being rushed or translated into external categories. Although two young people participated in the process, the analysis focuses on a single story, as an ethical and methodological decision aimed at remaining with one experience and caring for its narrative unfolding. From a hermeneutic reading of content, the analysis is organized into thematic threads that allow the city to be understood as an experience shaped by tension: between affection and danger, between territorial precariousness and care, and between memory and bodily alertness. In dialogue with Communication–Education and Artistic Education, this study proposes recognizing youth narratives as forms of urban knowledge. Rather than offering closed answers, the research invites the reader to slow down, to listen carefully, and to acknowledge that these stories also produce understanding about Bogotá and contemporary ways of inhabiting the city.