URBAN PUBLIC POLICIES AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN BARCELONA

Abstract

The regulation of social participation led to distinct experiences and ways of participation: those driven by public institutions, the ones driven by political and social organizations and the ones organized from the citizen coexistence in concrete urban spaces and moments. From the study of collective participation processes, in the transformation of central and peripheral neighborhoods of the city of Barcelona, it is shown that such processes are social resistances to public projects of urban transformation. According to the locational value of the neighborhoods, the participatory processes in the urban processes - some masked by revaluation of the habitat and by the rent as an income - are more or less intense and enduring according to the resistances both from the local government and from the inhabitants of the neighborhood. From the evaluation of these cases results it is settled the advantages and the problems that must be faced by the different participating agents in the processes of urban transformation.