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Limits of and opportunities for urban planning and social change in decaying housing estates: Some lessons from Barcelona

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Abstract

Modernist large housing estates in southern Europe developed between the 1950 and 1970s have suffered from dual physical decay and stigmatization over the last three to four decades, challenging public, para-public and private actors. This article addresses recent regeneration strategies and urban policies in Barcelona in a context of the ‘marketization’ of housing, austerity and a decrease in public resources. By means of a comparative approach, two regeneration projects of housing estates in Barcelona are analysed in terms of modes of governance and their social consequences since 2000. The mixed methodology consists of direct observations and analysis of the designs of the urban interventions; semi-structured interviews with the main urban actors and a sample of residents; and a tentative evaluation of recent social changes in these neighbourhoods. The results show: first, the positive outcomes of initiatives and the limits of the different strategies of urban regeneration carried out to address persistent forms of social exclusion; and second, the relation of these positive outcomes and limitations to changes in governance and the structure of land ownership, which constitutes a controversial aspect in the development of the projects. The role of different actors in regeneration and the reproduction of social inequalities and segregation are discussed. This points to the contingent nature of neoliberal governance as evidenced by the complexity and heterogeneity of its operation at the intra-urban scale even in apparently similar large housing estates in southern Europe.

Modernist large housing estates in southern Europe developed between the 1950 and 1970s have suffered from dual physical decay and stigmatization over the last three to four decades, challenging public, para-public and private actors. This article addresses recent regeneration strategies and urban policies in Barcelona in a context of the ‘marketization’ of housing, austerity and a decrease in public resources. By means of a comparative approach, two regeneration projects of housing estates in Barcelona are analysed in terms of modes of governance and their social consequences since 2000. The mixed methodology consists of direct observations and analysis of the designs of the urban interventions; semi-structured interviews with the main urban actors and a sample of residents; and a tentative evaluation of recent social changes in these neighbourhoods. The results show: first, the positive outcomes of initiatives and the limits of the different strategies of urban regeneration carried out to address persistent forms of social exclusion; and second, the relation of these positive outcomes and limitations to changes in governance and the structure of land ownership, which constitutes a controversial aspect in the development of the projects. The role of different actors in regeneration and the reproduction of social inequalities and segregation are discussed. This points to the contingent nature of neoliberal governance as evidenced by the complexity and heterogeneity of its operation at the intra-urban scale even in apparently similar large housing estates in southern Europe.

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Notes

  1. This local plan of Barcelona developed by the former municipal government followed similar guidelines to the previous Catalan law. It is called Plà de Barris in Catalan, and it available in the website: https://pladebarris.barcelona/ca/plans-de-barri, consulted in November 2020.

  2. Since the late 1970s, some Spanish films focused on the life of delinquents directly identified with the neighbourhood (notably the “Vaquilla”, surname of the most known antihero of these films) contributed to build this stigma.

  3. This documentary is available in the web: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEGT6ubwWOk&t=325s, consulted in November 2020.

  4. https://www.barrimina.cat/index.php/pla-de-transformaciinmenu-46, consulted in February 2020.

  5. This Platform have been created to represent a great variety of the civic associations based on La Mina (sports, culture-religion, storekeepers, social groups, etc.).

  6. These occupations of apartments appear in the newspapers and a process in the court of law has been initiated: https://www.elperiodico.com/es/sociedad/20170713/el-consorcio-de-la-mina-denuncia-la-ocupacion-de-unos-40-pisos-de-proteccion-6165831, consulted in February 2019. According to some direct interviews during the fieldwork in March 2019, these occupations continue.

  7. This extract and the following ones from interviews or focus groups have been translated by the authors from Spanish.

  8. The included statistic values are calculated by the authors, based on official data from the Spanish Statistical Office (INE): https://ine.es/, and from the Statistics of the municipality of Barcelona: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/estadistica/angles/index.htm, both consulted in November 2020.

  9. This factual data has been provided on published concluding reports of the European research project of the Horizon 2020 programme: GrowSmarter: https://grow-smarter.eu/fileadmin/editor-upload/Reports/GrowSmarter_Concluding_Report_WP2.pdf, consulted in January 2019. Information also provided by the interviewed architects leading the refurbishment of the neighbourhood.

  10. This competition is realised by Europan 14, in 2017: https://www.europan-europe.eu/en/news/e14-sites-barcelona-canyelles-es, consulted in March 2019.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the neighbours and the neighbourhood associations of La Mina and Canyelles, the interviewed architects, building engineers and planners, who found the time to take part in this research and provided access to their archives. We also extend our thanks to the three anonymous peer reviewers and the editors of this thematic issue for their comments on drafts of this article.

Funding

This research was partially funded by the Cluster of Excellence Territorial and Spatial Dynamics (LabEx DynamiTe) and the UMR 8504 Géographie-cités, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

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  1. UMR LATTS—Chaire Aménager le Grand Paris, University of Paris-Est-Créteil, Champs-sur-Marne, France

    José-Ignacio Vila-Vázquez

  2. CNRS UMR Géographie-Cités, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Petros Petsimeris

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Correspondence to José-Ignacio Vila-Vázquez.

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Vila-Vázquez, JI., Petsimeris, P. Limits of and opportunities for urban planning and social change in decaying housing estates: Some lessons from Barcelona. J Hous and the Built Environ 38, 171–197 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-022-09934-4

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