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Creative clusters are increasingly being recognized as vital tools in the promotion of the competitiveness, innovation, urban development, and growth of cities in developed countries. This paper studies the geography of Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) in Barcelona (Spain) for the years 2009 and 2017. We investigate the spatial distribution of firms using the Scan methodology, which identifies the localization of clusters and assigns them statistical significance. Our findings indicate that CCIs are not located haphazardly— they tend to cluster in and around Barcelona's prime districts. The evolution of the clusters over these nine years reveals distinct patterns of clustering among the twelve CCI sub-sectors. The mature clusters in Barcelona's core tend to have greater growth and enhanced transformation capabilities. Our results can guide CCI cluster policy, taking into account the specificity of each sub-sector. In addition, they can direct place-based development strategies, creative urban and rural planning, and restructuring in a polycentric context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satellite nocturnal images of the earth are a useful way to identify urbanisation. Nighttime lights have been used in a variety of scientific contributions, including studies on the identification of metropolitan areas as well as landscapes impacted by urbanization. However, the study of urban systems by nighttime light imagery has had a fundamental limitation to date: the low spatial resolution of satellite sensors. Although the DMSP Operational Linescan System (OLS) has been gathering global low-light imaging data for over 40 years, its 2.7 km/pixel footprint has limited its use for in-depth studies of urban development. The 2011 launch by NASA and the NOAA of the Suomi National Polar Partnership (SNPP) satellite, with the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor on board, has led to a significant improvement. This instrument has better spatial resolution (742 m/pixel), on-board calibration, a greater radiometric range, and fewer saturation and blooming problems than DMSP-OLS data. However, it still has considerable limitations for the in-depth study of the area and internal structure of urban systems.The launch of Luojia 1-01 in June 2018 has increased expectations. LJ1-01 is a nano satellite that can obtain high-resolution nocturnal images (130 metres/pixel). The aim of this paper is to analyse, and compare with previous satellites, the new instrument's capacity to delimit the urbanised area and its efficiency in identifying types of urban landscape (compact, dispersed and rurban). The study cases are Barcelona Metropolitan Region (Spain) and Shenzhen City (China). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Located between Marseille and Barcelona, Montpellier is one of the most attractive cities of the Mediterranean coast. It has more than 460,000 inhabitants and grows by 7,500 more inhabitants every year. This is largely due to its positive image and its freshly constructed neighbourhoods "Antigone" and "Port‐Marianne." From the late 1970s, the municipality's strategy was to organise the urban sprawl to the east and then towards the sea in the south of the city. The Lez, a small coastal river, well known for its spectacular flash floods, was the spine of this new urban growth. Internationally renowned architects and planners have been recruited to build these new "green" neighbourhoods (in French "éco‐quartiers") located on lands that used to be flooded regularly. This urban policy is largely due to the Montpellier's former mayor Georges Frêche and his deputy, the geographer Raymond Dugrand. The "urban planning" concept, or "urban design" projects, have largely been used by the local experts and officials to describe this development, but seem to be misused in this case. It has being mostly a political city‐project, still having the same objective as more than 30 years ago: to turn Montpellier towards the seaside. This paper will return to the strategy used at that time and, in retrospect, all the interrogations that have followed in terms of sustainable development and flood risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2000 the municipality of Barcelona launched an ambitious project called 22@bcn. This had two main goals: to make the city a leading center of scientific and technological production in the knowledge economy and to promote the integration and functional reconversion of a traditional industrial neighborhood located near the downtown area. This urban strategy is known as knowledge-based urban development (KBUD). The aim of this paper is to analyze the development of 22@bcn from the urban planning perspective, giving attention both to the theoretical framework of KBUD, as well to the social resistance and ideological, political and technical disagreements between residents, scholars and municipal advisors along this first decade. We state that 22@bcn constitutes an interesting case study of the creation of a knowledge-based district within a complex industrial area, with a rich urban heritage but also full of social diversity that must be taken into account in knowledge-based urban development initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of cities in recent decades has unleashed several challenges for urban planning, which have been exacerbated by their aging population. Among the most pressing problems in cities are those related to mobility and environmental quality, by which a global concern has flourished around enhancing pedestrian accessibility for both environmental and health-related reasons. To tackle this issue, this paper presents a new framework that combines multi-objective optimization with a graph model that aims to support urban planning and management to enhance age-friendly cities. The framework allows designing urban projects that improve accessibility and reduce noise and/or air pollution through the installation of urban elements (ramps and escalators, elevators, acoustic and vegetation panels), while considering the overall economic cost of the installation. To explore the trade-off between these objectives, we resort to multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, which permit to compute near Pareto-optimal interventions over the graph model of the urban area under study. We showcase the applicability of the proposed framework over two use cases in the city of Barcelona (Spain), both quantitatively and qualitatively. Results evince that the framework can help urban planners make informed decisions towards enhancing urban accessibility and the environmental quality of age-friendly cities. • Improvement of urban accessibility and environmental quality is formulated as a multiobjective optimization problem. • A framework using graph modeling and multiobjective metaheuristics is used to efficiently solve the formulated problem. • Results over two scenarios in the city of Barcelona (Spain) are examined quantitatively and qualitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iraqi cities, particularly the capital Baghdad, have great historical and cultural value, embodied in their historical centers' distinctive architectural and urban character. Baghdad experienced multiple wars and political conflicts that led to severe neglect, combined with an absence of clear strategies to rehabilitate its historical city center. These circumstances accelerated the decay and deterioration of its buildings and urban fabric, eventually leading to the mass emigration of historical centers' inhabitants. In the process of remedying this situation, two contradictory trends emerged. The first focused on looking to old, nearby cities for ideas and solutions. The second trend called for the examination of successful strategies employed elsewhere, for the purpose of benefiting and learning from them. This research adopts the second strategy, as it contains an implicit reference to dialogue between cities, and investigates its impact on strategies and plans for urban renewal. The present research aims to identify the possibilities and opportunities for dialogue between different cities, based on their ideological and experimental urban renewal strategies. The result of the dialogue can be translated into futuristic visions to serve the advancement and revitalization of any city, which will help address its occupants' needs. Therefore, this research focuses on Barcelona's urban renewal model, which has been one of the most successful for a city that has suffered experiences similar to those of Baghdad. This research relies on chronologies and spatial comparative methods to compare Baghdad and Barcelona. It concludes that the dialogue between cities is a dialogue of ideas, which provides the opportunity to benefit from others' experiences and strategies. This dialogue supports the exploration of new methods for the development of urban areas and the formulation of appropriate planning solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modernist large housing estates in southern Europe developed between the 1950 and 1970s have suffered from dual physical decay and stigmatization over the last three to four decades, challenging public, para-public and private actors. This article addresses recent regeneration strategies and urban policies in Barcelona in a context of the 'marketization' of housing, austerity and a decrease in public resources. By means of a comparative approach, two regeneration projects of housing estates in Barcelona are analysed in terms of modes of governance and their social consequences since 2000. The mixed methodology consists of direct observations and analysis of the designs of the urban interventions; semi-structured interviews with the main urban actors and a sample of residents; and a tentative evaluation of recent social changes in these neighbourhoods. The results show: first, the positive outcomes of initiatives and the limits of the different strategies of urban regeneration carried out to address persistent forms of social exclusion; and second, the relation of these positive outcomes and limitations to changes in governance and the structure of land ownership, which constitutes a controversial aspect in the development of the projects. The role of different actors in regeneration and the reproduction of social inequalities and segregation are discussed. This points to the contingent nature of neoliberal governance as evidenced by the complexity and heterogeneity of its operation at the intra-urban scale even in apparently similar large housing estates in southern Europe. Modernist large housing estates in southern Europe developed between the 1950 and 1970s have suffered from dual physical decay and stigmatization over the last three to four decades, challenging public, para-public and private actors. This article addresses recent regeneration strategies and urban policies in Barcelona in a context of the 'marketization' of housing, austerity and a decrease in public resources. By means of a comparative approach, two regeneration projects of housing estates in Barcelona are analysed in terms of modes of governance and their social consequences since 2000. The mixed methodology consists of direct observations and analysis of the designs of the urban interventions; semi-structured interviews with the main urban actors and a sample of residents; and a tentative evaluation of recent social changes in these neighbourhoods. The results show: first, the positive outcomes of initiatives and the limits of the different strategies of urban regeneration carried out to address persistent forms of social exclusion; and second, the relation of these positive outcomes and limitations to changes in governance and the structure of land ownership, which constitutes a controversial aspect in the development of the projects. The role of different actors in regeneration and the reproduction of social inequalities and segregation are discussed. This points to the contingent nature of neoliberal governance as evidenced by the complexity and heterogeneity of its operation at the intra-urban scale even in apparently similar large housing estates in southern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tributary streams or torrents form runoff axes that are unique to the Mediterranean. They have contributed to the formation and growth of some cities. The approach in this paper is to investigate the importance of the streams in the process of urbanization in Barcelona, as well as interventions in these urban axes as public spaces. The study was conducted in two phases. The: first was a literature review and an analysis old maps obtained in the Historical Archive of Barcelona City. AHCB with satellite photographs and current mapping in CAD format obtained from the Cartographic Institut of Catalonia ICC. The second phase studied the characteristics of the Ramblas as emblematic streets for their design characteristics as public spaces, and from an empirical study based on the observation through field visits. The work concludes by recognizing the contribution of urban interventions carried out in the Ramblas to become one of the most emblematic streets of Barcelona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lot of attention is currently paid to the success or failure of European cities in terms of competitiveness. Barcelona is usually viewed as a successful city, performing well in terms of its business indicators and considered as an international cultural reference and an attractive location for creative and knowledge workers. Some authors attribute this success to the good job that the city has done in promoting the Barcelona brand. On the contrary, others highlight the importance of the joint effort that institutions, policies and actors have put forward in embracing coherent long-term objectives for the development of the city. Both arguments will be discussed in this paper as well as the challenges and opportunities that the city is facing today in terms of its future development. The Barcelona Metropolitan Region: From Non-Existence to Fame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides an alternative empirical approach to identify optimal urban growth when accounting for its associated environmental effects. It is assumed that preserving outer landscapes and enjoying reduced density levels are inversely related, and so households must trade them off. The exercise analyses whether more disperse urban growth would be socially desirable in a particular area, the metropolitan region of Barcelona. A contingent valuation exercise using a double-bounded format was undertaken and an extended version of the spike model was used to estimate the willingness to pay of changing to a less dense urban path. The results show that a less compact scenario would be welfare-increasing in aggregate terms. It is suggested that general proposals on compacting cities should not necessarily constitute a desirable planning goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barcelona’s transformation into a global destination after Spain’s transition to democracy has received significant attention from international scholarship, but this is less the case for developments under Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975) that paved the way for the city’s perceived attractiveness today. A critical examination of two of these developments in the 1940s and 1950s—the disencumbering of the area in front of the cathedral and the disclosure of sections of the Roman city wall—and the discourses around them reveals the interplay of long-standing planning and archaeological concerns, nostalgic and ambiguously dissenting reactions among observers at the time, and the gradual emergence of Barcelona as a tourist city. Such interplay subtly mirrors the often unacknowledged eclecticism of the dictatorship’s urban discourse and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With his plan for the ensanche, or extension, of Barcelona, Cerdà presented a practical way of shaping the new city, with a healthy density and uniform accessibility that he advocated. This marked a new phase for cities, throwing them wide open to the future. Cerdà expressed his ideas with such authority that the concept of ensanche came to be accepted enthusiastically in many other cities facing similar problems at the time, and the construction of ensanches became widespread. At the start of the twenty-first century, these ensanches, now important urban areas in the cities they helped to develop, viewed as a representative sample, present a reality that continues to stimulate open reflection about the arguments of the fluctuating foundations underlying the art of constructing cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barcelona's urban characteristics and its tourist appeal are not merely outcomes of the Modernist period or a recent dramatic urban transformation but rather the result of a long and tumultuous historic evolution. The present article presents an account of relevant historical, political, economic, and social forces shaping Barcelona's urban evolution from the medieval times until the 1970s. The urban history of Barcelona illustrates how the landscape of a fashionable city is the result of urban planning in conjunction with many social, economic, and political events that often produce unexpected results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the historical development of the Spanish city of Barcelona and the widespread interest in the 'Barcelona Model" of urban planning and architecture. The anomalies of comparing Barcelona with other cities include the conditions of ex-capitality, a distinctive focus on civil society as the leading dynamic in the city's evolution, and a self-image as classic second city. The need for a specifically cultural approach to the urban past is cited.