Resumen de Lugares alterados, lugares interpretados: Remodelación urbana, identidad y participación en la Barcelona global
Pablo Juárez Latimer-Knowles
Space is the expression of society, and contemporary society is built around flows; hence the existence of a characteristic spatial form. However, most people still live in places and perceive their space by virtue of them. The coexistence of these two conflicting spatial logics results in a structural schizophrenia that threatens to break the channels of communication in society. The challenge of building bridges between the two entails dealing with processes that involve, in addition to material practices, other dimensions of social space. That is why both that multidimensionality and the procedures that enable the reconstruction of places in the context that it determines have assumed great relevance. With regard to the multidimensionality, the thesis acknowledges the fact that history -which underpins local identities- can be integrated into the physical environment to facilitate its experience simultaneously to that of other strictly spatial facets of what may be called 'interpreted places', where material heritage can play a significant role. With regard to the procedures, it highlights the importance of community processes in the reconstruction both of inclusive narratives and the places that they represent and in which they are represented. However, it is also argued that in the current context, which involves the disintegration of civil society, these processes may not be implemented in the absence of citizen mobilizations that demand the revision of institutional approaches that tend to generate 'altered places'. In Barcelona the gestation of this state of things had a decisive moment in 1986, when the city was nominated as an Olympic venue. That event can be understood as the beginning of a stage in which a quantum leap in the cultural-identitarian claims of the local urban movement took place, both from a quantitative and a qualitative perspective: quantitative, as much as it involved a change of scale in relation to the demands that had addressed the importance of heritage in previous stages, from the architectural element or complex to the urban area; qualitative because, on that scale, non-monumental heritage sites -especially the industrial- became appreciated per se rather than as mere releasers or containers of public space. This phenomenon began to manifest through the renewal of the Port Vell, starting from 1988. After the 1993-1997 period, which was marked both by the ebb of the Olympics and the municipal debt, the period that has been characterized by the urbanization of the so-called New Projects has become a prime setting for its development. This is suggested by the rise of citizen mobilizations in opposition to redevelopment plans that has been registered between 1998 and 2006. Among them, the ones that have affected Trinitat Nova neighbourhood, Lesseps Square, and Parc Central del Poblenou area have had a particular social and spatial impact. From a cultural viewpoint, this reality suggests the possibility of preserving 'spaces of hope' in the construction of an alternative globalization, provided that they acquire and consolidate a structural meaning through the combination of multiple local processes. From a political point of view, it reveals the role of participatory planning as a locus of encounter for actors and strategies that otherwise may be irreconcilable. Finally, a material stance highlights the complex impact of the above on the physical environment, in a time when the social emphasis on images and discourses can result either in a lively coherence between the perception, conception and experience of space, or an extraordinary lack of correlation between them.
