Warehouses of the port of Bar-cel-ona: the incorporation of the port spaces into the city (1981-2002)

Abstract

The transition of a port space with a range of urban metaphors into a space of simulacrum has become a fundamental part of our understanding of the process of symbolic and social appropriation of part of the port of Barcelona over the last two decades. The port has been traditionally a key element in the image of coastal cities and one of the foundations of their urban development. In these recent decades the traditional port-city relations have undergone qualitative changes due to the switch from the traditional port-related uses to leisure uses. However, given the nature of the port, an autonomous area at the legal and territorial levels, this process has suffered from the absences of a true appropriation on the part of the city. This work proposes an analysis of the experience of what politicians and urban planners call "city making", not in an old part or extension thereof, but in a place that has never been the city proper, what we might call a frontier space, as is the case with the port area. We base our analysis on a specific space: the area within the port of Barcelona known as “Port Vell”, a space in which the discourse of the building of the city and its public spaces raises a number of questions.