3 - The Barcelona Model of Urban Transformation

Summary

A crucial element of Olympic Barcelona was the major urban renewal implemented by the city hall. This transformation not only illustrated or complemented these municipal politics, but essentially embodied them. The spatial transformation of the city became the most visible component of Barcelona's euphoric politics during the 1980s.

The urban renewal has also been the most studied and lauded aspect of contemporary Barcelona. The general admiration that it has received in the last 20 years has generated considerable bibliography in urban and architectural studies. Even though most studies combine a variety of approaches, this bibliography can be roughly divided into three types. First, the renewal has been described as a unique and successful project that can represent a model for other cities; and, indeed, as I explain in Chapter Four, many urban planners and city halls have referred to Barcelona as their model. Second, more critical accounts have examined the transformation from urbanistic, sociological, anthropological, or journalistic disciplines; these texts have looked at the negative effects and darker sides of the renewal. Third, a few texts analyze the renewal in relation to capitalism and the new global order from a more theoretical standpoint.

My aim here is to proceed in two directions. First, I depart from this third critical corpus to relate Barcelona's transformation to a set of concepts and events such as postmodernism, Critical Regionalism, the generic city, Las Vegas' theme hotels, and Disneyworld's EPCOT. After looking over the urban history of modern Barcelona, this chapter undertakes a close reading of the programmatic texts by municipal urban designer, Oriol Bohigas.