Urban regeneration projects in Barcelona against the socio-spatial segregation (1986-2009): solution or myth?

Abstract

European cities owe their urban settings to complex processes of social change with dynamic changes occurring simultaneously in space. All these complex strategies of settlement and residential mobility are realized on the territory, reflecting dynamics of concentration and changing socio-spatial disaggregation. Since the mid 80's, the municipality of Barcelona introduced a series of urban renewal programs, Special Projects of Internal Reform (hereinafter PERI), in order to intervene in the depressed neighborhoods of downtown affected by a progressive decline of the population, a sharp deterioration in the conditions of housing, nonexistent services or inadequate and outdated infrastructure. Selective demolition was a key mechanism for creating new open spaces in highly densified and damaged urban center, while families affected by the demolitions were re-housed to the new housing settled close to the affected areas. This article aims to evaluate and compare the social impact of urban regeneration projects that affected these two districts between 1985 and 2009, with special attention to the role played by the foreign population in the district, through this process of transformation of the historic center. The quantitative longitudinal analysis presents socio-demographic variables which evaluates generated changes and analyses how the increasing number of immigrants in the historic center (currently around 40% of the population) could have altered the results of implemented urban regeneration programs.