Abstract
Cities’ increasing vulnerability to the effects of climate change calls for greater attention to urban transformational adaptation as a path towards environmental and social resilience. Through the initial Superblock project in the Poblenou neighbourhood of Barcelona – whereby traffic pacification is combined with new open space and transit network improvements – we analyse municipal efforts aligning transformational land use planning with climate adaptation objectives and the pushback again them. The initial opposition to the project embodied the everyday political struggle for municipal authority, that is, clashes over visions for the future Barcelona and who can define them and own them. Urban transformation – and the contestation around it – is thus not only about negotiating environmental and quality-of-life benefits that are ostensibly the target of interventions, but also competitive urbanism and related short-term political gains. Of particular importance is how civic and political contestation over the authority of climate champions can jeopardise not only transformational adaptation achievements, but also the political survival of those champions. Transformational adaptation can be slowed down not only by the fear for the material and political effects of transformation per se, but also because of how key stakeholders and the residents around them contest who has the authority to decide for the common good. This chapter is a modified and updated version of the Zografos et al (Cities 99:102613. Copyright (2020), with permission from Elsevier, 2020) article previously published in Cities, Elsevier.
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Notes
- 1.
Araos et al. (2016) illustrate that only 15% of the 401 municipalities with more than 1 million inhabitants report adaptation initiatives.
- 2.
With the exception of few empirical studies that typically focus on agriculture in the Global North (Hadarits et al. 2017; Marshall et al. 2012; Park et al. 2012) – two exceptions are Termeer et al. (2017) who analyse a more comprehensive flood protection policy initiative in the Netherlands, and Ziervogel et al. (2016) who explore transformative capacity in urban settlements in South Africa), this transformational adaptation literature is mostly conceptual.
- 3.
Superilla in Catalan.
- 4.
For a more specific description, see Barcelona Ecologia, the public agency in charge of the superblock project implementation: http://www.bcnecologia.net/es/modelo-conceptual/supermanzana
- 5.
Specifically, in La Ribera neighbourhood, Ciutat Vella (Old City) district.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Those figures referred to earlier data; more recent data (2017) show that figures have been reduced down to some 250 persons per year (El Periódico 2017).
- 9.
Also known as Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH from its initials in Spanish, standing for Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca), see: http://afectadosporlahipoteca.com/
- 10.
Barcelona in Common – in Catalan Barcelona en Comú (previously known as Guanyem Barcelona).
- 11.
See Colau’s interview with Al Jazeera in 2017: https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2017/04/barcelona-mayor-city-losing-identity-170412082645192.html and Barcelona en Comú’s 2015 program: https://barcelonaencomu.cat/sites/default/files/programaencomun_cast.pdf
- 12.
From its initials in Catalan: Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia).
- 13.
- 14.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Miquel Ortega for comments on an earlier draft of this analysis. We also acknowledge financial support from the Ramón y Cajal Programme (Contract number: RYC-2015-17372), the Juan de la Cierva Programme (IJCI-2016-31100) and the Maria de Maetzu Centre of Excellence Programme (MDM-2025-0552) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation & Universities and the European Social Fund; as well as the European Research Council Starting Grant GreenLULUs (GA678034).
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Anguelovski, I., Zografos, C., Klause, K.A., Connolly, J.J.T. (2022). Urban Transformational Adaptation: Contestation and Struggles for Authority in the Pilot Barcelona Superblock of Poblenou. In: Ruiz-Mallén, I., March, H., Satorras, M. (eds) Urban Resilience to the Climate Emergency. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07301-4_4
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