ancient cities

58 Barcelona, Spain
the Olympic Games were not a new idea. The first
attempt to bring the Olympic Games to Barcelona
was during the Second Republic, when the city lost
its bid against Berlin. Before launching the second
bid, the support of the International Olympic
Committee president, Juan Antonio Samaranch,
was obtained, and the strategy fit with other interests,
such as the willingness of the Spanish socialist
government to show how modern Spain had
become and the aim of the nationalist regional
government to promote the Catalan identity internationally.
Its primary goal was different from the
1980s Olympic Games: neither national promotion
(Moscow 1980 and Seoul 1988) nor private
profit (Los Angeles 1984). It was an investment
tool to change the city, a strategy later claimed by
other cities organizing bids for mega-events.
From this framework, the strategy can be considered
entrepreneurial: branding the city internationally,
attracting investment and tourism, and
relocating the city in the European hierarchy of
cities. The strategy was also successful in engaging
with different levels of government, the private
sector, and the citizens, but with important qualitative
differences from the entrepreneurialism that
predominated the 1980s in Europe and North
America. First, it not only “built to boost,” but
there was a clear idea of what the city wanted, taking
into account social issues, the long-term perspective,
and even development in the city, with
the spread of Olympic projects all over the city.
Second, there was a partnership structure, but with
strong public leadership, controlling the private
sector. And last, the city council led the whole
project, imposing its criteria on the other administrations.
The outcomes were mostly positive,
bringing a more social democratic approach to
entrepreneurialism.
In sum, after the Olympics, Barcelona became
an international model for urban regeneration,
and the post-Olympic scenario in Barcelona was
shaped by the successful repositioning of Barcelona
as one of the most admired and visited cities in
Europe. This success resulted in the return of local,
national, and foreign capital back into the city,
making corporate interests a major force in pressing
and shaping the city council’s agenda.
Furthermore, the early 1990s corresponded with
the locking in of neoliberalism in Spanish politics
through the application of the Maastricht Treaty
and its stability pact. This, together with the financialization
of the economy, the liberalization of
labor markets, the privatization of public enterprises,
and the return of centralized planning and
spending centered in Madrid, have all added pressure
for rethinking a new strategy for Barcelona.
The outcome of these processes has been to
enhance the competitive position of Barcelona
through supply-side economic policies, market competition,
and the abandonment of redistributive
concerns. In this context, Barcelona has relied on
new strategies and discourses that attempt to reposition
Barcelona within the flow of the global economy.
These are organized along a threefold strategy
involving a cultural strategic plan, a cultural megaevent,
and the creation of digital neighborhoods in
order to insert the city into the upper levels of the
international division of labor and the hierarchy of
global cities (or at least not to lose its position) and
to produce a new consensus over the Barcelona
model able to construct a territorial alliance involving
public and private actors engaging with supralocal
sources of investment and support. The mega-
event in mind was the Universal Forum of Cultures
2004, an event “to promote the global consciousness
and the exchange of theories, opinions, experiences
and feelings around globalization,” organized
around three axes: cultural diversity, sustainable
development, and conditions for peace. The city’s
long-term goal is to redevelop the northern part of
the waterfront, renamed Diagonal Mar and located
between Poblenou and the River Besós. Complementing
this event, the city council has been replanning
several working-class and former manufacturing
areas such as la Maquinista, Zona Franca, and
Poblenou as new digital quarters. At the moment,
the only consolidated area is in Poblenou, between
Diagonal Mar and the Olympic Village; the strategy
of regeneration has taken the form of a digital quarter.
The aim of the project, named 22@bcn, is to
transform Poblenou into the industrial district of
the new economy, with special relevance for the
informational and communication technologies,
and cultural (mainly audiovisual) and research and
development activities as well.
However, this later stage of Barcelona regeneration
has increasingly been put into question, as a
change of direction from the trajectory set from the
Cerdà Plan to the Olympic regeneration, fragmenting
the modernist grid of Barcelona. On the one hand, in