Does a ‘Barcelona Model’ Really Exist? Periods, Territories and Actors in the Process of Urban Transformation
Abstract The so-called ‘Barcelona Model’ of urban regeneration is known world-wide as a ‘success story’. Amongst the most frequently mentioned features of this ‘model’ are: the use of major events – such as the Olympic Games – as catalysts for great urban regeneration; the adoption of a relational mode of urban governance based on the collaboration between different tiers of government, public and private bodies; the political and administrative decentralisation and the participation of the citizenship. However, the ‘Barcelona Model’ has also received strong criticism from certain segments of the city's academic elite and several local social movements. This article calls into question the mere existence of one ‘Barcelona Model’. It highlights how the main strategies of urban public policy have changed in different periods. It illustrates that, territorially speaking, the strategies of urban regeneration have also been very varied. Eventually, it shows that the networks of urban actors involved in processes of urban change have been significantly diverse. Some learning elements for the analysis of urban regeneration are highlighted at the end of the article.
Las limitaciones del «modelo Barcelona»: una lectura desde Urban Regime Analysis
L’article explora el model de desenvolupament urba a Barcelona, utilitzant Urban Regime Analysis com a eina analitica. S’hi presenten les caracteristiques principals de la governabilitat de la ciutat i la seva evolucio des de principis de la decada de 1980 fins a l’any 2006. S’hi analitza la dinamica de la transformacio de la ciutat estudiant amb detall el proces de consolidacio de la col·laboracio entre els sectors public i privat iniciada en el context dels Jocs Olimpics de 1992. S’hi estudia el disseny d’aquesta col·laboracio i s’hi argumenta que aquesta cooperacio ha influit el desenvolupament de la politica de remodelacio urbanistica de la ciutat, creant un regim urba que dona prioritat al creixement economic per sobre d’altres consideracions socials i urbanes. L’estudi aporta una perspectiva critica al «model Barcelona».
The Provincial Centre at Camulodunum: Towards an Historical Context
Present assessment of the provincial enclosure at Camulodunum, more particularly how far it can be compared to the standard picture of similar centres elsewhere, is inevitably constrained by the limited evidence at our disposal. With no numismatic sources to draw on and in the absence of a single record of the provincial priesthood — a striking void that calls for comment — documentary testimony is restricted to what can be made of two passages in the literary authorities. The first, a notorious sneer in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis (VIII.3), tells only that a temple of some sort was associated somehow with the emperor Claudius. The second text, an obscure allusion in Tacitus, is at first sight no more enlightening but, on closer analysis, the phrase templum Divo Claudio constitutum (Ann. xiv.31) yields the invaluable inference that the temple was to the deified, not the living Claudius; in which case construction must have been begun in a.d. 54 or later. Archaeological data throw no light on the origins of the temple or of the precinct in which it stood but exploration has steadily enlarged our knowledge of the site itself, and understanding of the remains has now reached the stage at which, for all its puzzling lacunae, the centre is as well known in some ways as the triple-tiered complex at Tarraco, the provincial enclave of Hispania Citerior. We have arrived at the point where the British sanctuary and its counterparts on the Continent can be mutually illuminating.