The political economy of Barcelona’s urbanization

Greig Charnock, The University of Manchester Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

The Production of Barcelona

Lecture Plan

• Opening Remarks• Overview of Lefebvre’s metafilosophie and his critique

of representations• The Barcelona Case• 22@Barcelona

– Mondialisation– Representations of space

• Ciutat Vella– Contradictory Space– The politics of difference

Opening Remarks

“The production of space is the logical corollary of the production of nature” (Neil Smith)

“Urban modernity as a particular set of processes of socio-metabolic transformations promises exactly the possibility of the active, democratic, and empowering creation of those socio-physical environments we wish to inhabit” (Erik Swyngedouw)

Levebvre’s metaphilosophie

• Dialectical materialism• Production in the broadest sense• The survival of capitalism • The urban-form; abstract space of homogeneity,

relativised difference, and self-regulation of alienated subjects

• Differential space; irreducibility of everyday life• Revolution of everyday life; generalised self-

management (autogestion)

Levebvre’s production of space

Representations & Political Space

• Knowledge (savoir) a productive force • Representations: abstract, formal,

instrumental, servicable, violent• Critique of epistemology and of ‘models’• Political space …• … worldwide space (mondialisation)

Representations & Political Space

Diagonal Mar (BCN)

Representations & Political Space

Hazomon (Tokyo) Diagonal Mar (BCN)

Mondialisation

‘The new economy develops in an international framework, it has a global character, it has made creativity and information processing one of the basic competitive and productivity factors and it is organised around city networks. At the same time, this international framework generates an increasing interdependence between urban areas, and turns competition among cities in a game that takes place on the board of international economy’

Mondialisation

‘social and political space on a world scale reproduces and accentuates the local and national links to the productive forces, to advanced technologies (notably to information technologies), to property relations (notably those of states and their territories), to forms of organisation (notably to transnational firms), to ideologies (notably the representations of airspace, information, etc)’, and, in this way, ‘The capitalist mode of production realises itself’ (Lefebvre).

Mondialisation

m2 transformation existing industrial landm2 new constructionrecognition of existing dwellingsnew subsidised housing unitsm2 of green area landtotal investment in infrastructure

1,159,6263,200,000

4,6144,000

114,000€180,000,000

22@: The knowledge district

‘the coexistence of industrial, residential and service sector buildings, of greatly varying size, importance and styles, in very close proximity with what are, at times, brutal discontinuities and breaks. A highly irregular fabric is formed, with little homogeneity’ (Clos, 2004)

Poblenou: ‘Sick Social Space’

Like those a century ago, today’s new urbanist and compact city architects prepare a design for a place to be built according to a plan. It is not evolutionary …

Form, as biologists and geologists understand it, is an outcome of evolution. Form is a snapshot of process …

Form, in and of itself, is not measurable in terms of sustainability (Neumann, 2005)

Questioning the ‘Compact’

Urban Form

– Sinónimos: cohesión,consistencia, solidez, unanimidad,unión, concordia

– Antónimos: discordia, oposición’

(Guidoni, 2007)

Modelling Social Space

In the street … consumption gleams in all its hallowed splendour’, ‘far away, in the factories … [and] on the working class estates, everything is functional, everything is a signal – the repetitive gestures by which the labour force keeps on going in its everyday life (Lefebvre)

The Circuit of Everyday

Life

Closing the Circuit of

Everyday Life

http://doitinbcn.barcelonactiva.cat/portal/web/do-it-in-barcelona/inici

Contradictory Space

Ciutat Vella

‘The Hole of Shame’

‘The Hole of Shame’

‘The Hole of Shame’

‘The Hole of Shame’