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Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Taking one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Barcelona as a paradigmatic case, the aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which contestation organised by sublocal grassroots movements in the context of the current urban crisis operates, both in terms of content and form of protest. Our thesis is that resident mobilisation in the neighbourhood of Ciutat Meridiana is expressive of a new cycle of (urban) social mobilisations in Spanish cities. In such mobilisations, more or less spontaneous initiatives which emerged to counteract the effects of the crisis at the community level are simultaneously serving as platforms for reciprocity and political contestation. Establishing a dialogue with the literature on social innovation, in this paper we claim that these micro-local urban practices are linked to broader social movements and thus play a fundamental role in the political empowerment of citizens living in highly segregated and vulnerable urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 2005 Barcelona passed an Ordinance to ‘promote and guarantee peaceful coexistence in the city’. This put an end to five months of a political race against the clock. In those weeks, incivility made it to the government’s political agenda and the proposal was drawn up, discussed, amended and finally passed, generating a heated political debate, capturing the attention of the media and articulating a change of course in the government’s approach to community safety and urban disorder. This paper traces back the political and policy process of the Barcelona Ordinance in the context of the literature on the subject, looking at how civility and incivility were defined in this particular local context, but in light of similar processes of ‘defining up’ of deviancy elsewhere. It ends by highlighting the similarities and differences between similar processes in different countries, the policy transfer mechanisms and the active role played by cities in defining the urban security agenda in and beyond the urban sphere between the 1990s and the 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article investigates the urban and economic revitalisation of a traditional industrial working-class neighbourhood into a knowledge-based economic district. It explores why and how this new district is the result of an assertive public policy led by Barcelona's city council and implemented by a quasi-public agency. The project represents the most important urban-growth strategy in the city at the turn of the century and also exemplifies the advantages and shortcomings of many of the policy elements that have contributed to the radical transformation of Barcelona in recent decades. The article further highlights methodological challenges regarding the conceptualisation and operationalisation of new economic activities and it discusses the spatial and uncertain economic consequences of this ambitious approach by the local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]