Barcelona Societat 22

Saskia Sassen says that ‘the sociability and physical contact the city offers is irreplaceable’. The city provides places where people of different social and geographical origins can meet. Places of coexistence and conflict where part of people's everyday activities and human relationships take place.

This issue of Barcelona Societat magazine is dedicated to tackling the social problems that are expressed on the streets, in squares, in parks, in stations, on beaches, etc. Most of these problems have a hidden background and they are ignored until they are manifested in areas we call public places. In Barcelona, realities such as homelessness, illegal settlements, unauthorised street hawking and begging attract the interest of public opinion when they become visible. Poverty, exclusion from the job market, the lack of housing or the perpetual administrative exclusion of many migrants are problems with structural causes, which are treated as conflicts concerning the use of public places when they emerge onto the streets.

These problems leave no one indifferent and they lead to discussions on the limits of coexistence and freedom, on the role of the administrations or on their ability to transform reality. Which players define the use of public places? What should the role of the municipal administration be? What activities put people at risk? What are the limits of social intervention?

Barcelona, a destination city as well as a city for passing through, with an economic activity that creates opportunities for living and for surviving, where it is increasingly difficult to gain access to housing, and with one of the highest population densities in the world – around 16,000 inhabitants per square kilometre – has extremely dynamic public places that are subject to a number of tensions.

We have asked various authors to reflect on and provide evidence of conflicts caused by the privatisation of urban areas, on the dynamics of criminalisation and stigmatisation of poverty, on how gender inequality is expressed in public places, on successful social intervention experiences in realities such as settlements and caring for homeless women.

Reflections which are added to what has been learnt by social intervention services in public places under Barcelona City Council's Area of Social Rights, which after two decades of experience, has become a benchmark in Europe.

An inclusive urban area is where people are not penalised because they are in an economically and socially vulnerable situation, and where it is easy for everyone to continue with their daily lives, with self-sufficiency and freedom. For this reason, this issue includes experiences and reflections concerning the role of the Administration and neighbourhoods in the transformation of public places, in avoiding commercialisation and making them friendlier for functional diversity, and making it easier for neighbours to meet and look after one another.

Laia Ortiz

Mayor of Social Rights

Barcelona City Council

Foreword

Foreword

Author

Albert Sales

Summary

Peter spent the afternoon sitting in his wheelchair, with his back to the supermarket door and a carton of wine in his lap. On the crowded pavement, a little over four metres from a well-known Barcelona shopping street, it was an uncomfortable sight for the pedestrians going in and out of the supermarket, carrying plastic bags or taking their trolleys to do the shopping. His untidy, dirty appearance when he arrived at around 2 pm was compounded by the stench of urine from mid-afternoon onwards. Apart from his visual impact and the smell, the large, bearded man didn't interact with passers-by at all.

In depth

The city, a battlefield. Privatisation dynamics of urban spaces in one of Barcelona’s neighbourhoods

Author

José A. Mansilla López

Summary

The privatisation of urban spaces plays an increasingly prominent role among the measures designed to promote and sustain the dynamics of capital accumulation. In cities like Barcelona, bar and restaurant terraces have proliferated under the cover of measures designed to enable the productive reorientation of the city: from a Fordist and industrial past to a flexible present where tourism and restaurants have become predominant features. This productive shift has greatly affected Poblenou, a former manufacturing stronghold. Various social groups and movements in the neighbourhood have responded to and denounced such events, in addition to making proposals and suggesting alternatives, disputing the role of ownership of these processes, electing for collective appropriation protests, where the emphasis is placed on the value of use.

In depth

Ten years of civility “by law”. a study on the application of the byelaw on coexistence in barcelona’s public spaces

Authors

Cristina Fernández Bessa and Andrés Di Masso Tarditti

Summary

This paper includes the main results of a study on the application of the “Byelaw on Measures for Promoting and Ensuring Civic Coexistence in Barcelona’s Public Spaces”3, better known as the “Coexistence Byelaw” or “Civility Byelaw” (henceforth, CB), which we were commissioned to carry out by Barcelona City Council's Area of Citizen Rights, Participation and Transparency.
The CB is an administrative regulation intended “to be an effective tool for dealing with new situations and circumstances that may affect and alter coexistence” and “to avoid all types of behaviour that may disturb coexistence and to minimise incivility in public spaces” (Preamble to the CB) To that end, it establishes a set of standards for behaviour in public spaces as well as the infringements, penalties and other specific interventions which correspond to each.

In depth

Public places and the criminalisation of homelessness from a human rights perspective

Authors

Sonia Olea Ferreras and Guillem Fernàndez Evangelista

Summary

Various concepts of homelessness are used simultaneously in Europe, and they influence the design of the public policies that aim to eradicate it. Various European countries are developing comprehensive national strategies for homeless people, while coercive, repressive approaches against some types of homelessness proliferate. The penalisation of homelessness is a process that involves the criminalisation of homeless people's everyday subsistence activities in public places; their access to the temporary accommodation system and exercising their right to housing is hampered or they are expelled from or concealed in certain areas of the city, and if they are foreigners, they are even arrested or deported to their countries of origin. This article argues that we are faced with the neoliberal approach to homelessness, based more on criminalisation than on satisfying these people's needs from a perspective of human rights.

In depth

Approaching safety from a gender perspective in urban planning

Author

Sara Ortiz Escalante

Summary

Fear and safety have been the object of extensive study throughout the history of urban planning and development. Although safety continues to be a central element in urban policy, few cities have incorporated a gender perspective in urban planning, safety and the prevention of violence. This article looks back at how feminist urban planning has approached safety over the last forty years. A review of feminist contributions is followed by the methods used to approach the topic of safety in the intertwined public-private space. Finally, the article presents two examples applied in practice undertaken by Col·lectiu Punt 6. The article concludes with a reflection on how institutions can better incorporate feminist knowledge and practices, whilst also recognising the progress made by authorities in this area..

In depth

Social needs of informal street vendors in Barcelona

Author

Carlos Delclós

Summary

Street vending is a typical phenomenon of large cities with a strong presence in the tourism sector. Despite this, from the summer of 2015, there has been an increasing problematization of the phenomenon in the city of Barcelona. This article describes some of the characteristics of street vendors in Barcelona, starting from a study that combines documentary analysis with structured interviews with focal groups and key informants. Based on this analysis, the main barriers to the full participation in the city of the group are identified, which include the administrative situation, the penalization of their activity and the lack of access to the formal labor market, among other factors.

Experiences

Public spaces, in the plural

Author

Nicolás Barbieri

Summary

“A bridge is a man crossing a bridge'” (Libro de Manuel, Julio Cortázar)
The image of cities as promises of integration and freedom is faced with more and more difficulties. On the one hand, cities are the setting for difference, inequality and disconnection. Yet, at the same time, it is in cities that we express our desire to live together, in diversity and on an equal basis. With autonomy and interdependence. That is why we speak of the right to the city, not only in its territorial and physical dimension but also in the personal and community sense. We talk about the right to public space, not just in the form of infrastructure, squares or bridges but fundamentally as the right to cross it, pass through it, inhabit it. In short, we talk about the right to meet.

Experiences

ESFORSA’T (Esport, Formació, Salut i Temps Lliure)

Authors

APC Franja Besòs and CSS Franja Besòs

Summary

The ESFORSA’T (Esport, Formació, Salut i Temps Lliure) project has been going for six years now in the Bon Pastor and Baró de Viver neighbourhoods. It is a community project with group activities led by a team of street educators (APC Franja Besòs) and a Social Services Centre (CSS Franja Besòs) in which various collaborators from the area and the city also take part.
The project’s aim is to work with young people aged between 16 and 25 to promote healthy leisure activities in order to reduce the risk indicators in this age band. Initial exploratory work enables us to guide young people towards various activities, to take part in the workshops that are proposed and monitor each one individually, aside from fostering healthy habits, integrating them into society and helping them find work to improve their living conditions..

Experiences

Comerç Amic sense Barreres (CASBA).1 The experience in the Casc Antic, Sants and La Marina neighbourhoods

Authors

Sandra Bestraten, Neus Tormo, Clara Santamaria and Ferran Urgell

Summary

CASBA is a sensitisation and training project for students of architecture that promotes improved accessibility in local commercial establishments and fosters the participation and independence of people with functional diversity. To achieve this objective, an innovative project has been started that provides a link for many stakeholders to work together. The Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB) at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia has adopted the service-learning approach as a vital tool for introducing students to social realities on a local level. The Municipal Institute for People with Disabilities (IMPD) coordinates associations of people with disabilities in the neighbourhoods under study, retailers associations, the university, Barcelona City Council, the Ciutat Vella and Sants-Montjuïc districts, the Commerce and Markets Department and the Institute of Urban Landscape, and also promotes cooperation on the project. The agreement is altruistic but the personal satisfaction enhances student learning and the commitment of all those involved in spreading the benefits of increasing accessibility for everyone.
After running for four years, the CASBA project has carried out a pilot test to implement the improvements, with the help of financial incentives offered by Barcelona City Council.

Experiences

'Vincular x educar' project

Authors

Jordi Caròs de la Cruz, Carme Sáez Peinado, Jèssica Vázquez Mula, Rosa Ana García Moreno and Miquel Rubio Domínguez

Summary

'Vincular x educar' is a community project set up to further children’s education processes by improving the link families have with schools and leisure associations in the community.
For the children, this is an opportunity to establish good links with their neighbourhood. For the families, it means a possibility to have closer ties with the school and leisure associations in their area. For the school, it can facilitate a more overall connection with the pupils and establish educational continuities between the various stakeholders in the area. For all of them, as a whole, it means participating in a proactive way in children’s education.
That is done by schools and Social Services working together to identify areas where first-year primary school students will be able to develop their potential better and compensate for any shortcomings, and by establishing links between children and their families and the neighbourhood recreation centres and Scout groups (esplais and caus).

Experiences

A project for homeless women in Nou Barris

Author

Clara Naya Ponce

Summary

“Lola, no estás sola” is an association formed by eight women set up to manage a social intervention project with homeless women in Nou Barris. The reason why a group of women organised ourselves to make this project a reality is part of the DNA of the district we live in; it’s because of the air we have breathed taking part in associations and organisations, because of all the times we have felt the solidarity between women neighbours in the streets, and because of our feminist outlook too.

Experiences

The experience of rehousing the carrer d’àlaba settlement

Author

Gemma Izquierdo

Summary

At the end of 2014, the need to rehouse nine families with minors from a settlement in Carrer d’Àlaba in Barcelona provided an opportunity to simultaneously evaluate two different social-intervention models for housing families over a period of two years.
At the start of this experience, all kinds of questions were raised concerning the chances of achieving positive results with the subject group of people, who had a deeply-rooted itinerant lifestyle.
A monitoring methodology based on the Social Work Plan has provided data concerning development, trends and costs which are valuable for reaching conclusions about the experience and for considering new challenges.

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