Does a ‘Barcelona Model’ Really Exist? Periods, Territories and Actors in the Process of Urban Transformation

Abstract

The so-called ‘Barcelona Model’ of urban regeneration is known world-wide as a ‘success story’. Amongst the most frequently mentioned features of this ‘model’ are: the use of major events – such as the Olympic Games – as catalysts for great urban regeneration; the adoption of a relational mode of urban governance based on the collaboration between different tiers of government, public and private bodies; the political and administrative decentralisation and the participation of the citizenship. However, the ‘Barcelona Model’ has also received strong criticism from certain segments of the city's academic elite and several local social movements. This article calls into question the mere existence of one ‘Barcelona Model’. It highlights how the main strategies of urban public policy have changed in different periods. It illustrates that, territorially speaking, the strategies of urban regeneration have also been very varied. Eventually, it shows that the networks of urban actors involved in processes of urban change have been significantly diverse. Some learning elements for the analysis of urban regeneration are highlighted at the end of the article.

Key Words:

• Urban regeneration
• urban governance
• neighbourhood regeneration
• Barcelona

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to Ricard Gomà, who supervised the doctoral thesis on which this article is based and for his very helpful comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper. The author also wants to thank the editors for the opportunity to contribute to this Special Issue.

Notes

1 Since these first democratic elections, the social democratic party (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya– PSC) has always been the city's very first political force. All of Barcelona's Mayors have belonged to this party. However, PSC has always governed with the support of an eco-socialist formation heir to Euro communism, Iniciativa per Catalunya–Verds (IC–V). Between 1979 and 1982, Convergència i Unió (CiU), who nowadays constitutes the main opposition party, were involved in this coalition, as well as Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) who, after a long period without any representation in the local plenary, was brought back into the Council in 1995, again joining the governing coalition with the PSC and IC–V until the latest elections in May 2007.