Global Downtowns

3. Simulations of Barcelona: Urban Projects in Port Spaces (1981–2002)

3 Simulations of Barcelona: Urban Projects in Port Spaces (1981–2002) Francesc Magrinyà and Gaspar Maza For a long time, urban port areas have been conflictive zones, spaces of transition, attractive and inhospitable at the same time. Spaces of dubious legality, they are where mysterious overseas exchanges take place, an exchange with what lies beyond. Spaces filled with promises, dreams, and menaces. In the last instance, these spaces carry an ambiguous but intense cargo of meaning and metaphor. Conscious of the importance of this dimension of meaning, often, promoters of this class of operation around the world have played the card of nostalgic simulacrum to the hilt: with port activity eliminated, new installations force themselves to recreate a maritime air to continue to simulate that which they are not and to dissimulate that which they have become. —Pep Subirós The large port zone close to central Barcelona has witnessed, in a brief period of time, an important series of urban reforms. This area has been transformed into a n ew civic space without losing its older condition of zona franca (a distinct port authority). The space also now houses new commercial buildings , offices, and cultural centers in the form of museums, an aquarium, and a 3-D IMAX cinema. Thus, it has been labeled by the city as a new area of centrality, in a sense, a new “downtown” near but not connected to either the 66 Francesc Magrinyà and Gaspar Maza ritual and political center of the city or its shopping centers (Ajuntament de Barcelona 1991). At the same time that these objectives were achieved, however , they were undercut by urban disorders in the form of ongoing conflict, violent incidents, and rapid changes. Thus, shortly after these new spaces made their debut, there was a need to react to issues there via new projects of reform that altered them. Both the appearance of this new urban centrality and these processes of rapid change led us to our ethnography of this space with the goal of understanding the different projects that have converged there and their lessons for other central spaces, either revitalized downtowns or newly constructed ones. Our first question is whether the port actually constitutes a space where meaning has been added, a recuperation of public space, or if there simply has been a substitution of businesses and industries. In this sense, it is necessary to investigate whether we are dealing with fictional centralities or if the area will really become a new center of attractions. A second set of questions i nvolves whether t hese a reas have been appropriated or rejected by citizens and how. This leads us to corollary questions: Is this a place for citizens or a place for tourists? Is this a public space, or does it continue to be an autonomous space? A nd a final question we consider v ital: W hat a re t he causes of the sequence of urban actions that have reshaped this place? To respond to t his set of questions, we begin with a brief historical review of the reconstruction of the port and its repercussions on the wider city. We then concentrate on what we call the “Reconquest” of public space in the port (1981–2000). Here, from an ethnographic viewpoint, we have identified three principal stages: success, decadence, and reform of the reform. Finally, we analyze the absence of social mechanisms of appropriation in these new spaces and the consequent fragility that has dominated this emergent “non-space” (Augé 1995). To do so, we use an analytic model based on the centrality of networks in the disciplines of geography (Raffestin 1980) and urbanism (Dupuy 1996). The City and the Sea: Making Sense of a Contradictory Relationship Th e first reports of port structures in the area of Barcelona go back to t he fifth and fourth centuries b.c.e. A t that time, the Iberians used an area near the mouth of the Llobregat River as a port: this lies to the west of Montjüic Simulations of Barcelona 67 where the current Zona Franca (primary port) now lies. By the early Middle Ages, Barcelona had become a great maritime power without really having a true port. The Llotja (Stock Exchange) building near the Place of the Palace (Pla del Palau) functioned as a ma rket, built on the shores of the Mediterranean a lthough ot her c entralized...