LAUSR

For Italians, the ZEN area (Zona Espansione Nord), Palermo, is an urban space associated with marginality and exclusion, drug trafficking, mafia, violence and deviant behavior. This paper analyzes the perception of ZEN residents about their urban space. To this end, different perceptive maps are used in order to identify visual and subjective representations as they enable the emergence of personal views about the urban space that are difficult to express in words. When drawing, respondents express their individual opinions and depict their neighborhood; these being critical for social research. In this way perceptive maps enable the graphical visualization of the fragmentation experienced by the urban space, which is expressed at different levels. They also identify certain infrastructures that serve as benchmarks and different types of perception that vary according to the level of educational achievement of respondents. This paper addresses the subjective dimension about the urban space and encourages us to reflect on the need to explore different methodologies to understand the complex individualities underlying this subjective dimension; it also acknowledges the important role of subjectivity within the study of urban phenomena.