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Barcelona, Heritage City
Barcelona is internationally admired for the quality of its urban landscape, in which heritage is an essential, central and unifying force. Now the city is faced with a need to redefine what heritage is, to move beyond the traditional monumental definition of the concept and incorporate popular heritage, the working-class and urban heritage that creates an emotional link with everyday life, an essential factor for maintaining an inclusive community identity in neighbourhoods and in the city as a whole.
For this reason, the government measure “Barcelona, Heritage City” presents a new heritage policy that is based on a future model of the city, which consists of a considered and well-executed reuse of the urban environment, leaving behind the traditional concept of urban growth based on the occupation of new land.
The measure therefore fosters the enhancement and preservation of architectural, natural and environmental features that add value to the city's collective memory and the collective significance of the urban landscape. It also fosters a new way of thinking that values the urban environment and prioritises the reuse and regeneration of existing buildings and complexes, making effective use of existing resources and saving energy.
The idea is to turn an old paradigm on its head and, instead of expediting demolition, encouraging renovation, thereby fostering a fairer, neighbourly, socially integrative and sustainable city model.
The government measure coordinates this general task via six fundamental goals:
1. To roll out new tools and mechanisms that allow the identification of heritage values, starting with updating the heritage catalogue and improving the local authority's resources.
2. To promote new regulatory tools for the protection and conservation of heritage values.
3. To create intervention and improvement programmes for the built urban heritage.
4. To expand the municipal teams dedicated to heritage management and protection.
5. To favour the generation of new forums between the general public and the local authority with regard to heritage issues, in both technical and cultural terms.
6. To create new mechanisms for the dissemination of the city's heritage values and elements that foster culture and sustainable tourism.
Achieving these goals would enable Barcelona to position itself as an international benchmark for heritage policies, at a time when it has the important international commitment of being the 2026 World Capital of Architecture.
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