Marc Martí-Costa

The knowledge city against urban creativity? Artists’ workshops and urban regeneration in Barcelona

Nowadays, knowledge, culture and creativity are cornerstones of cities’ strategies for local development. Following different approaches, cities are trying to develop knowledge and creative districts/neighbourhoods to foster economic growth in the new economy. Nevertheless there are several contradictions between the knowledge economy and the creative economy as motors for urban development. Through the study of artists’ workshops located during the 1990s in an old industrial neighbourhood planned to be a new knowledge district of Barcelona, these contradictions are explored and the policy results are explained.

Does Participation Really Matter in Urban Regeneration Policies? Exploring Governance Networks in Catalonia (Spain)

In this article we focus our attention on the progressively prominence of the citizen participation into the networks of governance oriented toward urban regeneration. We expound the main results of our recent research carried out in 10 deprived neighborhoods in Catalonia (Spain), going in depth into three central issues: (1) the weight of citizen participation in the governance networks, (2) the substantive effects of this participation, and (3) the factors that influence the variety of experiences of participation in urban regeneration. We conclude that the development of participatory governance networks is dialectically related to policy outcomes and to prior structural elements like the position of the neighborhoods within the urban system or the availability and characteristics of the local social capital.

Geographies of governance: How place matters in urban regeneration policies

Neoliberal accounts of local governance have paid insufficient attention to variation in the forms of urban governance and urban policies across local regimes. On the basis of a comparison of eight deprived neighbourhoods in Catalonia (Spain) where the same regional programme of urban regeneration has been carried out, this paper explores the significance of place when it comes to understanding the adoption of different models of urban governance. In Spain, the combination of a high autonomy of local government and a very strong tradition of neighbourhood associations has resulted in both local authorities and community organisations playing a very important role in local policy-making. Local structural and agency factors are both essential to understanding why models of urban governance and regeneration change from place to place. The paper concludes that neighbourhood type, size of municipality, social capital and previous conflicts are crucial for the understanding of urban governance geographies.

Urban governance in Spain: From democratic transition to austerity policies

This article aims to explain the evolution of urban governance in Spain during the last 40 years as a product of different waves of state rescaling. Historical, political and economic specificities shape the evolution of Spanish urban governance, especially because of the recent process of democratic transition, regional decentralisation and the specific process of de-industrialisation. We distinguish three periods in urban governance trends, from the restoration of democracy in the late 1970s to the current austerity urbanism marked by the economic crisis starting in 2008. For each phase, we highlight the three interrelated factors explaining urban governance: (1) the evolution of the Spanish political economy in the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism; (2) the evolution of the welfare state; and (3) the role of urban social movements.