Citizenship and Development in the XXI Cities: Polis and Civitas or Just Urbs?

The article aims to determine the problems of the city as polis, civitas and urbs, to identify its characteristics and emphasize the serious problem that means the centrality of the urbs in the modern city. It analyzes aspects of public space, citizenship and city, as interrelated, recovering from urban studies, political and social analysis of the city, to better characterize their problems. From the literature and existing studies we found that civitas and polisare in crisis, and reduced danger of disappearing, to result in a urbs, utilitarian and less and less symbolic value. The result is poverty, greater inequality and social fragmentation, fear, insecurity, isolation, weakening of the civitas and polis, disenfranchisement, depoliticization and dehumanization; against the hegemonic and development of real estate market. It is concluded that dominates the urbs, which, as all the problems of the city needs to be rethought from the civitas and polis.