The "creative destruction": the language of urbam reform in three cities of mediterranean Europe at the end of XIXth Century (Marseille, Naples and Barcelona)

Abstract

The concept of "creative destruction", borrowed from economic theory in new trends of historical geography, is revised in this article to illuminate the destructive effects of the implementation of urban reform in nineteenth-century European cities. The rhetoric of "creative destruction" characteristic of the language and ideology of nineteenth-century urban reform projects is highlighted through the analysis of the cultural logic and the technological reason that supported them. Examples from cities in Mediterranean Europe (Marseille, Naples, and Barcelona) trace the failure of these projects of reform of the urban space, to show in a comparative perspective the political, economic, and social limits imposed upon such projects.