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This paper presents the edition and commentary of three papyrus fragments from the collections preserved at the Abbey of Montserrat and the Archive of the Jesuits in Barcelona. They have in common that they might be interpreted as connected to magical or divinatory practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic factor models are a powerful technique for analysing vast volumes of data, more precisely, time series. However, the large volumes of data that come from public transport networks tend to have heterogeneity and a cluster structure. In this paper, Dynamic Factor Models with Cluster Structure (DFMCS) are used to forecast hourly entrances in the different stations of the Barcelona subway network. The main and most novel contribution lies in the use of clustering techniques to make an initial grouping of the behaviour of the elements belonging to the time series, in order to subsequently be able to predict future patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many developed cities around the world, vehicle sharing is becoming an increasingly popular form of green transportation. While such services are associated with lower emissions and easier mobility, their management poses a significant challenge. In this paper, we examine a dataset collected in Barcelona during the months of august and september 2020 in order to investigate relocation strategies and user clustering. By proposing a neighborhood area split and relating it to user demand, we propose two different areas based on majority demand and users' requests and provide interpretations of both. We then aim to identify groups of similar users using a variant of Recency Frequency Monetary/Duration (RFM or RFD) clustering that extends to GPS coordinates of voyages in order to differentiate scores based on economic and geographical factors; furthermore, a user-based clustering approach was used to maximize client preferences. As a result of our analysis, the sharing company may be able to make more informed decisions regarding where to focus its resources. In fact, we find that the majority of the demand is concentrated in an area that represents 7.47 percent of the city's area. Additionally, we propose a discount-based approach in order to influence the user's behavior in parking the vehicle where it is most needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the process of gendering platform co-operativism through a case study of two rider co-operatives owned and managed by women: Señoritas Courier in São Paulo, Brazil and Les Mercedes in Barcelona, Spain. While both co-operatives arose in response to similar concerns and have adopted a common approach, one is located in the global South, while the other is in the global North. This allows for a comparison of how prefigurative politics have shaped the terms of platform co-operativism, as well as an analysis of the transnational character of worker struggle. The article is particularly interested in: What was the impetus for the formation of the two women-owned platform co-operatives? How have the co-operatives sought to redefine the relationship between gender, work, and technologies? The paper argues that the expansion of women-owned platform co-operatives constitutes an opportunity to advance a more inclusive, feminist digital economy. Members see co-operatives as an important dimension of collective organisation and the articulation between paid and unpaid care work. Both co-operatives strive to create a safe environment which provides support in work and motherhood. However, platform co-operatives have struggled to expand amidst a highly competitive market. The article concludes with a discussion on the need for public policies that can support platform co-operativism among women delivery workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plastic debris in aquatic and marine environments often breaks up into fragments that are smaller than 5 millimeters, which are then classified as microplastics. While there is not yet a standardized and validated methodology for characterizing microplastics, the protocol developed in this study uses methods for isolating and observing microplastics and for the investigation of how they interact with organisms present in biofilms from urban waterways. Project-based learning (PBL) has been proven to be a successful strategy in K–12 science education; the implementation of PBL provides opportunities for student-driven inquiry and provides teachers with a means to integrate curriculum with current research and to consider the effects of human impacts on the environment. This paper describes the protocol developed for high school teachers to educate students about microplastics and how to successfully isolate and observe them. Teachers and students in Maryland successfully isolated microplastics from biofilm samples from the Inner Harbor, Baltimore, Maryland, and shared their results. International teachers and students in Barcelona, Spain, involved in a related project, had similar results and shared experiences through images, video, and online meetings. These collaborations provide important opportunities for student-driven inquiry and for them to engage in methods of current scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of participatory democracy have long noted dynamic interactions and transformations within and between political spaces that can foster (de)democratisation. At the heart of this dynamism lie (a) the processes through which top‐down "closed" spaces can create opportunities for rupture and democratic challenges and (b) vice‐versa, the mechanisms through which bottom‐up, open spaces can be co‐opted through institutionalisation. This paper seeks to unpick dynamic interactions between different spaces of participation by looking specifically at two forms of participatory governance, or participatory forms of political decision making used to improve the quality of democracy. First, Mark Warren's concept of 'governance‐driven democratization' describes top‐down and technocratic participatory governance aiming to produce better policies in response to bureaucratic rationales. Second, we introduce a new concept, democracy‐driven governance, to refer to efforts by social movements to invent new, and reclaim and transform existing, spaces of participatory governance and shape them to respond to citizens' demands. The paper defines these concepts and argues that they co‐exist and interact in dynamic fashion; it draws on an analysis of case study literature on participatory governance in Barcelona to illuminate this relationship. Finally, the paper relates the theoretical framework to the case study by making propositions as to the structural and agential drivers of shifts in participatory governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the common practice and the regulatory requirements related to the urban planning of our cities continues to define environmental quality through compliance with urban planning codes, the inadequacy of this parameter is increasingly evident. For this reason, numerous urban regeneration programs, and above all urban sustainability assessment standards, evaluate the environmental sustainability levels and livability, as if they were a project indicator. The paper describes the most consolidated indicators and proposes the use of the livability indicator of the public space promoted by the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona with some modifications that make it more consistent with the Milanese and Italian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the connections between nightlife leisure, everyday places and young people in the transition towards adulthood. When thinking about the discovery of nightlife, the places where leisure takes place are central: they are often places of confidence and belonging – features that offer both young people and families the conditions for the first autonomous explorations of urban space at night. These places also give young people the possibility for new practices and interactions with peers, that are in key in identity processes. The analysis is based on qualitative data collected in Barcelona, Spain, with young people (14–16 years old). The paper will focus on three dimensions: the neighbourhood, the 'legitimate spaces' of consumption and the ephemeral places of festivals. I argue that these places' specific features play an important role in how adolescents progressively build autonomous practices of space and new social networks during the night. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses how far co-creation methodologies can be applied to policy-making innovation in the platform economy. The driving question is how co-creation collaboration-based policy-making can increase diversity and strengthen the participation of actors. The analysis is based on a three-year case study on the platform economy in Barcelona, describing how co-creation dynamics contributed to the participatory definition of local public policies and agenda. The methodology is based on participatory design techniques, involving participant observation and content analysis. Results indicate that co-creation can increase participation diversity aligning academic, economic, and social viewpoints in policy innovation from a quadruple helix perspective. In addition, collaboration schemes assist in engaging a wide diversity of participants in the policy ideation process which, in this case, resulted in 87 new policy measures, with contributions from more than 300 people of different backgrounds and perspectives. The case study demonstrates the value of a cycle of collaboration going beyond mere symbolic engagement or citizen support to public policy-making. It further shows the importance of combining co-creation with methods of action research, strategic planning and knowledge management, as well as with face-to-face interactions and online channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1957 to 1973, Barcelona Zoo was transformed from a small-scale, antiquated establishment harboring very few animals, a place that was still in a poor condition following the Spanish Civil War, into a new, larger, modern, and internationally recognized institution that included up-to-date animal enclosures and that boasted one of the first dolphinariums in Europe, as well as a famous white gorilla as its icon. From its very beginning, this renovation involved an intense popularization campaign. In this paper, by describing the public discourse generated throughout this transformation and by analyzing the roles played by Antoni Jonch, the director of the zoo at that time; Josep Maria de Porcioles, the then-mayor of Barcelona; and General Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator who was head of state during this period, I will highlight how the context of the dictatorship not only authorized the new Barcelona Zoo but is, in fact, crucial to its understanding. The narratives that surrounded the renovation of the zoo focused on its civic and educational purpose, with a firm emphasis on modernity. The zoo was a modern space for learning about animals in order to become better people. These narratives were not only suitable to the policies, ideas, and aims of Porcioles' City Council and Franco's dictatorial regime; in fact, they completely matched them. Both local and national governments benefited from the restructuring of Barcelona Zoo and from its public discourse as a tool for social control and an instrument for their own propaganda, legitimation, and perpetuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The understanding of urban social-ecological systems requires integrated and interdisciplinary methods. This paper explores differences in the accessibility of urban green spaces (UGS) based on urban morphology. In contrast to other comparative analyses that followed simplified quantification of UGS provision and/or omitted the impact of morphological properties of urban space, this study proposes three improvements. First, it uses the share of UGS in the service area of 300 m walking distance around each residential building in a city as a measure of UGS provision. Second, it includes the potential physical accessibility of UGS as warranted by key actors, such as owners or managers, who decide whether UGS are open or not to potential users. Third, it links UGS accessibility and heterogeneous urban structures. We developed a mixed-methods analysis that combines multiple data sources regarding UGS, the spatial distribution of residential buildings, and street networks. We conducted our analysis in five case-study cities (Barcelona, Halle, Lodz, Oslo, and Stockholm). Our findings suggest that the urban structures where the human-environment interaction transformed the space (such as in the core city areas) are characterized by limited UGS in the service area. Urban structures that are less transformed by human activity (especially suburbia) have the highest share of selected UGS in the service area. In addition, even if the share of UGS in the service area is high, many of them might have limited physical accessibility. In the broader sense, this highlights that social-ecological processes are linked to urban form and cannot be separated in an analysis. Therefore, social-ecological systems could be better understood through the lens of urban morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tomography (TomoSAR) has been widely used in the three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of urban areas using the multi-baseline (MB) SAR data. For urban scenarios, the MB SAR data are often acquired by repeat-pass using the spaceborne SAR system. Such a data stack generally has long time baselines, which result in different atmospheric disturbances of the data acquired by different tracks. These factors can lead to the presence of phase errors (PEs). PEs are multiplicative noise for observation data, which can cause diffusion and defocus in TomoSAR imaging and seriously affect the extraction of target 3D information. In this paper, we combine the methods of the block-building network (BBN) and phase gradient autofocus (PGA) to propose a novel phase compensation method called BBN-PGA. The BBN-PGA method can effectively and efficiently compensate for PEs of the MB SAR data over a wide area and improve the accuracy of 3D reconstruction of urban areas. The applicability of this proposed BBN-PGA method is proved by using simulated data and the spaceborne MB SAR data acquired by the TerraSAR-X satellite over an area in Barcelona, Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution in urban areas poses a significant and pressing challenge for modern society. Unfortunately, the existing network of pollution detectors in many cities is limited in scope and fails to adequately cover the entire geographical area. Consequently, the implementation of spatial prediction algorithms becomes essential to generate high-resolution data. In this paper, we introduce two significant contributions: 1) We formalize the air pollution prediction problem as a Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) estimate within the framework of a Markov Random Field and 2) we propose a message-passing algorithm, which stands out as an efficient solution that surpasses the current state of the art. The experimental procedure has been carried out using the case study of the city of Barcelona, based on a dataset extracted from the BCN Open Data portal. [Display omitted] • Spatial prediction of air quality is tackled with a novel formalization and method. • The use of a Message Passing style algorithm is proposed. • The model is trained with data specific to the city of Barcelona. • The presented method outperforms other existing methods for the given problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution in urban areas poses a significant and pressing challenge for modern society. Unfortunately, the existing network of pollution detectors in many cities is limited in scope and fails to adequately cover the entire geographical area. Consequently, the implementation of spatial prediction algorithms becomes essential to generate high-resolution data. In this paper, we introduce two significant contributions: 1) We formalize the air pollution prediction problem as a Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) estimate within the framework of a Markov Random Field and 2) we propose a message-passing algorithm, which stands out as an efficient solution that surpasses the current state of the art. The experimental procedure has been carried out using the case study of the city of Barcelona, based on a dataset extracted from the BCN Open Data portal. [Display omitted] • Spatial prediction of air quality is tackled with a novel formalization and method. • The use of a Message Passing style algorithm is proposed. • The model is trained with data specific to the city of Barcelona. • The presented method outperforms other existing methods for the given problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current urban and transport planning practices have significant negative health, environmental, social and economic impacts in most cities. New urban development models and policies are needed to reduce these negative impacts. The Superblock model is one such innovative urban model that can significantly reduce these negative impacts through reshaping public spaces into more diverse uses such as increase in green space, infrastructure supporting social contacts and physical activity, and through prioritization of active mobility and public transport, thereby reducing air pollution, noise and urban heat island effects. This paper reviews key aspects of the Superblock model, its implementation and initial evaluations in Barcelona and the potential international uptake of the model in Europe and globally, focusing on environmental, climate, lifestyle, liveability and health aspects. We used a narrative meta-review approach and PubMed and Google scholar databases were searched using specific terms. The implementation of the Super block model in Barcelona is slow, but with initial improvement in, for example, environmental, lifestyle, liveability and health indicators, although not so consistently. When applied on a large scale, the implementation of the Superblock model is not only likely to result in better environmental conditions, health and wellbeing, but can also contribute to the fight against the climate crisis. There is a need for further expansion of the program and further evaluation of its impacts and answers to related concerns, such as environmental equity and gentrification, traffic and related environmental exposure displacement. The implementation of the Superblock model gained a growing international reputation and variations of it are being planned or implemented in cities worldwide. Initial modelling exercises showed that it could be implemented in large parts of many cities. The Superblock model is an innovative urban model that addresses environmental, climate, liveability and health concerns in cities. Adapted versions of the Barcelona Superblock model are being implemented in cities around Europe and further implementation, monitoring and evaluation are encouraged. The Superblock model can be considered an important public health intervention that will reduce mortality and morbidity and generate cost savings for health and other sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last three decades, the most populated Spanish cities have experienced significant spatial, social, and economic changes. The new urban economies have played an essential role in the acceleration of such transformations, entailing a range of both positive and negative impacts at the spatial, social, economic, and environmental levels. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of how the advancement of the globalization and deindustrialization processes has encouraged social polarization in the cities of Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, as well as a significant increase in intra-urban socioeconomic residential segregation. The article concludes by arguing that the increase in levels of social inequality and residential segregation reflects the trend towards polarized urban models, which reproduce in urban space the differences observed in the social structure. • Large Spanish cities have experienced significant changes due to globalization and deindustrialization processes. • The advancement of structural processes has led the emergence of a polarized occupational that tends towards greater wage inequality. • Social inequality has become a structural phenomenon in Spanish global cities • Residential segregation has increased due to the gentrification and touristification of urban centres and the suburbanization of poverty. • This dynamic indicates the emergence of polarized urban spaces, which reproduce in the territory the differences observed in the social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pullout analytical model is introduced to simulate the Double Edge Wedge Splitting (DEWS) test to obtain the tensile post-peak response of steel fiber reinforced concretes. One of the main barriers to the widespread utilization of FRC as a structural system is the anisotropy of the material. This augments the uncertainty of the material behavior (fibers random distribution and orientation in the bulk concrete), increases the dispersion of the test results, and requires the performance of characterization tests to check the residual tensile stresses at specific crack opening intervals. The characterization tests proposed in the literature (e.g., Barcelona, Montevideo, Wedge Splitting Test, EN 14651) are time-consuming and relatively complex, demanding careful preparation and hydraulic presses with data acquisition systems. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion of alternatives for FRC characterization procedures by the introduction of a pullout analytical model to predict FRC constitutive law based on DEWS tests. The pullout analytical model is calibrated with pullout tests considering straight and hooked-end steel fibers with different strengths, embedment lengths, inclinations, and diameters. A 3D digital model reproducing the experimental DEWS samples is developed, considering the fibers' randomness distribution, orientation, and wall effect. The analyses are compared with four different experimental tests. The results define a linear post-peak tensile constitutive law, considering the mean residual stress values at different COD values. The model was able to reproduce the specimens' production procedures and the fibers' distribution and orientation correctly. The results demonstrated a good agreement with the experimental data. [Display omitted] • Pullout analytical model for straight and hooked-end steel fibers. • 3D parametric digital model considering fibers random distribution and wall effect. • Prediction of DEWS tests considering the manufacturing process. • Determination of FRC linear tensile post-peak constitutive model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bertie Russell's 2019 Antipode paper documents the emergence of a "new municipalist" movement, which approaches the city as a strategic entry point for a radically democratic politics. Given this movement's aspirations towards the transformation of the municipal state, how might state theory inform research and practice on new municipalism going forward? This is the question with which Russell concludes his paper and the question taken up here. The paper focuses on municipalist initiative Barcelona En Comú's endeavours towards the remunicipalisation of energy, and the ways in which the radical vision underpinning this has been frustrated. Putting these experiences into conversation with the theoretical work of Gill Hart, I develop an "open dialectical" account of the state, which understands the processes that constitute the state as articulated through the contingent mediations of "prosaic" practices. This state theory, I argue, sheds new light on the possibilities and frustrations facing new municipalist movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The everyday difficulties faced by working‐class women, including access to food, are aggravated in critical periods, such as wars and economic crises. However, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was accompanied by a revolution, in the Republican zones, where women opened spaces for their emancipation. By examining social reproduction practices surrounding food in Barcelona during the years 1936–1939, we contribute to critical research on food sovereignty in the urban contexts. Our core findings inform the role of women in food provision and production, through individual subsistence agriculture, involvement in Barcelona's anarcho‐syndicalist agricultural collective, as well as in agriculture education and training programmes. Our research is based on original archival data, historical press and interviews with witnesses of the war. We conclude that revolutionary and transformative actions, including current food sovereignty practices, need to make gender justice a central goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Christian Pentecostalism has been one of the most successful religious movements in the province of Barcelona, while the high level of immigration from Latin America has clearly been an influential factor in its development. Yet, despite the fact that Pentecostalism has played a prominent role in religious diversification in Catalonia, it has been the subject of very few studies. This paper seeks to address this gap in research and shed light on an area of fundamental importance to the movement: its ritual dimension. Drawing on ethnographic information from the Iglesia Evangélica el Vallès (Canovelles), we describe and analyze the principal channels of communication with the sacred established by the Latin American Pentecostals. In our conclusions, we show that the communicative practices developed during worship are oriented toward manifesting the presence of the Holy Spirit, leading to the emergence of ritual condensation around this symbolic force. For this purpose, practices such as "praise", the "laying on of hands" and "speaking in tongues" establish sequential and progressive communication with the Holy Spirit throughout the process of worship, culminating in mimetic communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics disciplines in education, subjects tend to use contextualized activities or projects. Educational robotics and computational thinking both have the potential to become subjects in their own right, though not all educational programs yet offer these. Despite the use of technology and programming platforms being widespread, it is not common practice to integrate computational thinking and educational robotics into the official curriculum in secondary education. That is why this paper continues an initial project of integrating computational thinking and educational robotics into a secondary school in Barcelona, Spain. This study presents a project-based learning approach where the main focus is the development of skills related to science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics and the acquisition of computational thinking knowledge in the second year of pupils' studies using a block-based programming environment. The study develops several sessions in the context of project-based learning, with students using the block-programming platform ScratchTM. During these sessions and in small-group workshops, students will expand their knowledge of computational thinking and develop 21st-century skills. We demonstrate the superior improvement of these concepts and skills compared to other educational methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Barcelona in general and its historic center in particular have undergone a sea change from an industrial city to a global tourism and service center. Some authors argue that urban renewal schemes are ruining the heritage of cities. However, Barcelona showcases a kind of urban renewal which is culture-led yet conserves the city's unique identity. This paper shows that in Barcelona's case, the relationship between urban branding and urban renewal is dialectical and disputed rather than top-down and by dictate. Thus, in the case of the Raval district, the urban and cultural planning led by local government and cultural institutions is part of a concerted effort to turn a blighted area plagued by social problems into a new global cultural district. The renewal scheme brings the district's activists and artists into the picture to come up with an inclusive, bottom-up approach to planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The yield performance of 14 hazelnut cultivars of different origin was compared from the second to the twelfth year after planting. The trees were trained as spindles with a planting distance of 4.5 m x 2.5 m, leading to a tree density of 800 trees per hectare. Yields >1 kg tree-1 were achieved from the fourth year after planting, and >3 kg tree-1 from the sixth year after planting. Substantial yield fluctuations between cultivars and years were observed. After reaching maturity a mean yield of 2.2 t ha-1 was achieved in the whole experimental plot, whereas the highest yielding cultivars, 'Barcelona, 'Webbs Price Cob' and 'Emoa 1' achieved average yields of 3.2 t ha-1, 2.9 t ha-1, and 2.6 t-1, respectively. The cultivars differed significantly in fruit mass and kernel mass. The varieties 'Merveille de Bollwiller' (4.0 g) and 'Corabel' (3.8 g) had the highest fruit mass. The small-fruited cultivars 'Pauetet' and 'purple-leaved filbert' had the highest mass proportion of kernel to fruit of 52% and 49%, respectively. This relation was 42% when taking into consideration the average of all cultivars and years. The mean proportion of empty nuts was 2.6% in the whole experiment, but individual cultivars reached up to 16% empty nuts in some years. 'Corabel' and 'Barcelona' had <1% empty nuts. In the 4th, 6th and 11th year after planting, averages numbers of 16, 9, or 16 root suckers per tree were counted. The time required for winter pruning in the 6th and 7th year after planting was 22 h ha-1 and 62 h ha-1, respectively. The experimental data shown in this paper demonstrate that it is possible to grow hazelnuts in a spindle system in the Central German region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the exit profile of a student who completes their studies at the Claret School of Barcelona, a primary and secondary educational institution belonging to the Claretian Community in Spain. The Claret School of Barcelona is a center that is partially funded by the government, however, all students must pay tuition. The final two grades at the school, that is the baccalaureate years, are private and receive no public funding. During a five-year period (2014–2019), a group of teachers from both the primary and secondary schools, along with the management team and external psycho-pedagogical advisors with expertise in educational innovation, undertook a project to identify the values that are taught and developed during the course of a student's compulsory educational career at the Claret School of Barcelona. To verify that the values identified by the faculty complied with the students' reality, a questionnaire to survey students' perceptions regarding the 14 ideal characteristics of a Claret student upon the completion of their studies was designed and validated, obtaining a CVI (content validity index) of 0.77. Completed by a total of 312 students, the results confirmed the importance of 12 of these characteristics, while two received rather low results when compared to the average score (66.04%). The characteristic which scored the lowest score was the question regarding the religious dimension of the student (question 10). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Finike Seamounts (Anaximander) area was designated as the Special Environmental Protection Area (SEPA) in 2013 by the Turkish government to protect its unique biodiversity components such as rich benthic communities, vulnerable deep sea species and highly migratory species. As the area is not totally inside the territorial waters of Türkiye, this initiative can facilitate and be beneficial for transboundary cooperation in terms of conservation for highly mobile and vulnerable species such as sea turtles, bluefin tuna, seabirds, and cetaceans. Besides, it can be included in the Specially Protected Areas of Mediterranean Importance (SPAMI) list under the Barcelona Convention in order to promote bilateral cooperation with the neighbouring countries. Designation as one of the Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSAs) under the Convention of Biological Diversity is also another option for marine conservation in this region. Finally, the Finike Seamounts SEPA needs a long-term scientific monitoring study to understand both the benthic and pelagic components of its biodiversity. The surveys in 2021 initiated such a study and the papers published in this issue of the journal (Vol.28 No.2) as the results of 2021 surveys provide the baseline data of the Finike Seamounts SEPA to be referred and evaluated for the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a context of global-scale inequalities and increased middle-class transnational mobility, this paper explores how the arrival of Western European and North American migrants in Barcelona drives a process of gentrification that coexists and overlaps with the development of tourism in the city. Research has focused increasingly on the role of visitors and Airbnb in driving gentrification. However, our aim is to add another layer to the complexity of neighbourhood change in tourist cities by considering the role of migrants from advanced economies as gentrifiers in these neighbourhoods. We combined socio-demographic analysis with in-depth interviews and, from this, we found that: (1) lifestyle opportunities, rather than work, explain why transnational migrants are attracted to Barcelona, resulting in privileged consumers of housing that then displace long-term residents; (2) migrants have become spatially concentrated in tourist enclaves and interact predominantly with other transnational mobile populations; (3) the result is that centrally located neighbourhoods are appropriated by foreigners – both visitors and migrants – who are better positioned in the unequal division of labour, causing locals to feel increasingly excluded from the place. We illustrate that tourism and transnational gentrification spatially coexist and, accordingly, we provide an analysis that integrates both processes to understand how neighbourhood change occurs in areas impacted by tourism. By doing so, the paper offers a fresh reading of how gentrification takes place in a Southern European destination and, furthermore, it provides new insights into the conceptualisation of tourism and lifestyle migration as drivers of gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centred around the life narratives of HIV-positive gay migrants in two Mediterranean cities, Barcelona (Catalonia/Spain) and Rome (Italy), this paper frames their decision to migrate towards the big city as an active strategy to escape the 'second closet', a concept introduced by Berg and Ross in 2014 to refer to the hiding of HIV-positivity by gay men to avoid negative social condemnation. In line with recent literature on gay migration that has emphasized its relational and situated character, the paper focuses on several factors leading to the decision to migrate: sexual desire and the imagery of the big city; the configuration of the welfare regime allowing free access to antiretroviral therapies (ARTs); access to employment in the services sector; and the absence of strong ties in the new city. Methodologically the paper draws from in-depth interviews conducted with 24 HIV-positive gay men between 2014 and 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on a conference Jornadas de Análisis Instrumental (JAI), held in November 2002, at Barcelona, Spain. The meeting of JAI describes a very interesting approach to the extraction, purification and characterization of synthetic crudes of peptide hormones of therapeutical interest. The rigorous and useful methodology proposed is characteristic of analytical proteomics and it is being imported to trace element speciation investigations. It could be said that nowadays the JAI in Spain is playing a role which is reminiscent of that played in the U.S. by the well known Pittsburgh Conference: it is a great occasion for manufacturers to show the latest instruments and methodologies of modern analytical science in the instrument exhibition to scientists and users attending the JAI scientific meeting.

This paper discusses a series of morpho-syntactic properties of Romance languages that have the functional projection vP as its locus, showing a continuum that goes from strongly configurational Romance languages to partially configurational Romance languages. It is argued that v-related phenomena like Differential Object Marking (DOM), participial agreement, oblique clitics, auxiliary selection, and others align in a systematic way when it comes to inflectional properties that involve Case-agreement properties. In order to account for the facts, I argue for a micro-parametric approach whereby v can be associated with an additional projection subject to variation (cf. D'Alessandro, Merging Probes. A typology of person splits and person-driven differential object marking. Ms., University of Leiden, 2012; Microvariation and syntactic theory. What dialects tell us about language. Invited talk given at the workshop The Syntactic Variation of Catalan and Spanish Dialects, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, June 26–28, 2013; Ordóñez, Cartography of postverbal subjects in Spanish and Catalan. In Sergio Baauw, Frank AC Drijkoningen & Manuela Pinto (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2005: Selected papers from 'Going Romance', Utrecht, 8–10 December 2005, 259–280. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007). I label such projection "X," arguing that its feature content and position varies across Romance. More generally, the present paper aims at contributing to our understanding of parametric variation of closely related languages by exploiting the intuition, embodied in the so-called Borer-Chomsky Conjecture, that linguistic variation resides in the functional inventory of the lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a growing number of large, densely populated cities have emerged, which need urban traffic planning and therefore knowledge of mobility patterns. Knowledge of space-time distribution of passengers in cities is necessary for effective urban traffic planning and restructuring, especially in large cities. In this paper, the inbound ridership in the Barcelona metro is modelled into a three-way tensor so that each element contains the number of passenger in the ith station at the jth time on the kth day. Tucker3 decomposition is used to discover spatial clusters, temporal patterns, and the relationships between them. The results indicate that travel patterns differ between weekdays and weekends; in addition, rush and off-peak hours of each day have been identified, and a classification of stations has been obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Plate waste is the larger contributor to the total food wasted in school canteens. • Students waste daily about 46 g of food in school canteens in the Barcelona region. • Nudging strategies could prevent 41% of the plate waste in school canteens. • The strategies evaluated are mainly effective in preventing fruit waste. • Strategies involving staff seem to be more effective in preventing plate waste. Food waste (FW) prevention is an essential measure to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal target 12.3, achieve more sustainable food systems and tackle the climate crisis. This paper aims at evaluating nudging strategies' impact on FW prevention in school canteens. To do so, it applies a four-stage methodology in 4 school canteens of the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona as case studies. This study has three main contributions. First, it provided real FW data by estimating a daily FW of 46 g per dinner. Secondly, it observed a 41% FW prevention impact when specific nudging strategies were applied. Dessert was the course with bigger reductions, especially when fruits were served. In addition, strategies involving canteen staff seemed to be more effective. Third, it proposed a methodological framework to co-design and evaluate the impact of FW prevention strategies by quantifying plate waste at school canteens. Thus, this study suggests nudging strategies as innovative interventions to improve food systems' sustainability by preventing FW in school canteens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the emergence of Online Travel Reviews (OTRs), the collective co-creation of a destination brand image has been more evident than ever before. Stories and emotions expressed in these platforms by experienced tourists can significantly influence other users' intention to visit. This study explores the extent to which political matters like the incidents that occurred during the last quarter of 2017 related with the Catalan independence process may have a negative impact on the brand image of a destination. This paper has used a specific methodology for content analysis of social media in the field of tourism to study the worst rated OTRs (one-star) of seven different attractions of Barcelona in three social media platforms that are able to geolocate places (TripAdvisor, Google Maps and Facebook) to determine the nature, discourses and the emotions raised. Although most complaints refer to the intrinsic problems of the attractions like high entrance prices and long queues due to tourism overcrowding, results reveal that OTR platforms also include tourists' personal opinions on such issues as politics and religion. The originality of this research paper is that it delves into users' co-creation of destination brand image through the analysis of negative OTRs and the emotions expressed in their comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to advance the development of participation in urban design from a substantive standpoint. It departs from a prevailing focus on ideals of participation and describing participatory methods and processes. Instead, the paper stresses the need to acknowledge 'the political' nature of public spaces and how this challenges participatory urban design processes. This leads to a substantive exploration of differences, conflicts and power in the planning and design of public spaces, i.e., unearthing the political. The case of a participatory process in a neighbourhgood of Barcelona illustrates the theoretical discussion. This helps bring forward a much-needed critical and reflective, rather than idealistic, theorization and practice of participation in urban design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon a comparison between four socially innovative housing activism initiatives, this paper makes new theoretical propositions on the nature of social change by bringing together a contextual approach on housing activism and an agency analysis of collective leadership practices. On one hand, this paper analyses how historical and geographical neighbourhood features constrain and enable housing activism. On the other hand, the paper unveils collective leadership practices that democratize socially innovative initiatives and make social change happen. Assuming that housing activism is spatially and institutionally embedded, the paper concludes that some leadership practices not only enable the emergence of such processes but also foster their sustainability and increase their impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the water-energy nexus in low income households. Water, electricity and gas constitute fundamental resources for households that interplay throughout many daily activities. However, in studies on household poverty, there is a tendency to treat water and energy separately. In this contribution, we argue for the joint consideration of both forms of deprivation and present empirical evidence for the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB). In Barcelona, the dynamics between water and energy poverty in households widened the scope of institutional measures on energy poverty by incorporating water poverty as part of guaranteeing the 'right to basic utilities'. We document the interactions between the two resources through the water-energy nexus approach by combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Apart from presenting the expenditure-based analysis of the Spanish Survey of Income and Living Conditions, which reveals that a significant part of the population is both water and energy poor, with the results from our semi-structured interviews, we are able to demonstrate how much importance and value the affected households give to their thermal and hydric (dis)comfort, which in turn, exerts a direct impact on their daily hygiene and health. The paper also highlights institutional and socio-technical perspective as the differences in ownership and regulatory status of both resources cause discordances in public efforts to alleviate the status of the water and energy poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, one of the most important causes of mortality is air pollution. To solve this problem, governments have implemented policies to reduce on-road and industrial emissions. In this regard, the Barcelona city council and Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) started implementing the Nova Xarxa de Bus (NXB) to redefine the bus network following the criteria of connectivity, efficiency, and rationality. This policy was implemented in seven phases from 2012 to 2018. In this context, this paper analyses the impact of this policy on Barcelona's air quality using a dataset from 2008 to 2016. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we show that implementing these new routes increased air quality in Barcelona. Additionally, we show that pollution decreased in each phase analysed, especially in the air quality stations near the main roads. From our results, we can infer that an optimal bus route design can improve air quality in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing public opposition, megaevents such as the Summer Olympics continue to proliferate both in the Global North and South, thus reshaping the built environment of cities and the living conditions of their inhabitants. This paper presents a novel analytical tool that expands the perspectives from which to explore urban megaevents. Building on the controversy among megaproject scholars around Albert Hirschman's Hiding Hand principle, we study the diverse roles that optimism can play in the justification, planning, implementation, and evaluation of megaevents. This approach has the potential to unveil key urban policy agendas underpinning the hosting of megaevents. It does so by focusing on two key aspects: first, the various types and degrees of power exercised by the involved stakeholders in their attempts to justify and support or oppose an event during the planning phase, and second, the coping mechanisms deployed by the promoters as they face unexpected constraints during the implementation phase. In doing so, the approach can help to develop more nuanced and context-specific criteria for evaluating the success of megaevents. We exemplify the approach by using the 1992 Barcelona Olympics as an illustrative case study. • The Hiding Hand controversy provides a framework for the analysis of urban megaevents. • We use the Barcelona 1992 Olympics as case study to illustrate the framework. • Sincere and strategic overoptimism play diverse roles throughout a megaevent lifecycle. • The analysis exemplifies the context-dependence of the notions of success and failure. • Sincere and strategic overoptimism typically operate in tandem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper incorporates an explicit mobility dimension into the definition of the neighbourhood and explores its possible implications for the study of spatially distributed phenomena. We analysed the distribution of robbery and theft in Barcelona, Spain, as a testing application. Crime data were aggregated to nonoverlapping units (census tracts) and to a new measure of overlapping neighbourhoods, that we named 'walkhoods', accounting for the distance that can be covered in 5 min at a walking speed of 1 m/s, considering all possible physical barriers. The outcomes of regression models shed new light on the relationship between mobility and crime. When the walkhood scale is established, human mobility patterns have a stronger effect on the outcome variables than when census tracts are used. Results point to walkability constraints and social distances imposed by the massive presence of sporadic users in public spaces as strong predictors of crime occurrence, arguably due to their negative effects on neighbourhood social ties formation. Our findings suggest that more flexible definitions of the neighbourhood could address the social and spatial heterogeneity of urban spaces more properly than traditional approaches. • We propose a new measure of the neighbourhood as a function of walkability. • We called it walkhood and used to study the distribution of crime in Barcelona. • Crime is highly dependent on the concentration of sporadic visitors in public space. • The walkhood is equipped to address the spatial and social heterogeneity of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The building sector has a major economic, environmental, and social impact on society; hence, it is crucial to promote sustainable construction practice. The facade is one of the largest main components of a building, which could strongly contribute to the sustainability performance for the whole building. Previous studies started defining tools to assess facade sustainability, although relevant indicators were dismissed or, if considered, they were rather subjectively quantified. Likewise, most existing tools omit stakeholder satisfaction in the assessment process for optimal facade systems. In this regard, this paper presents a new systematic approach based on the Integrated Value Model for Sustainable Assessment (MIVES) for holistic sustainability assessment of building facade systems by integrating stakeholders' satisfaction in the decision-making process. To this end, for the first time to the authors' best knowledge, the most representative and discriminative indicators for quantifying facade sustainability were identified to define a new approach to minimize subjectivity in the decision-making process and, consequently, to ease the task of decision makers when choosing and designing facade alternatives for new buildings and rehabilitation. This approach is validated and initially applied to assess the six most common residential facade systems in Barcelona, Spain. Results indicate that these building elements have low to medium sustainability performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing interest in transparency policies and, concomitantly, the need to include a gender perspective in analysing the actions of public authorities, the intersection of both fields has attracted limited attention from the research community. The scarce contributions to this topic do not provide a framework that supports an empirical examination of institutional transparency and gender, and therefore, the implementation of these policies remains unexplored. This paper contributes to the debate on institutional transparency and gender perspective by developing an index of gender inclusion in transparency policies based on the information available on official local government websites, and by identifying and analysing factors that drive variations in the municipal councils. The research focuses on the municipalities of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (MAB) and includes other cities for comparative purposes. The findings indicate that the number of inhabitants of the municipality, the presence of women in its political bodies and institutional factors, and particularly the volume of the budget, are positively associated with the incorporation of a gender perspective on institutional websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a critical analysis of the 15-Minute City concept, developed through a comparative analysis of three case studies: the ville du quart d’heure in Paris, the Superilla plan in Barcelona and the Piazze Aperte programme in Milan. This comparative analysis is addressed through the lens of the theoretical and design paradigm of civic design/capital web and aims to highlight the limits and potential of these models and inform future research directions to pursue the eco-social transition of urban systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reinterprets these transformations, departing from notions of 'relational space', re-conceptualizing urban spaces as mobile and relational, continuously reconstructed and reground ed by flows of people, knowledge, and capital. We examine the representations of mobility and the embodied mobile practices in relation to the ongoing mutation of a Barcelona's neighbourhood, in which the urban transformations linked to the 1992 Olympic Games, the renewal of the waterfront and the later development of a hi-tech cluster has triggered a profound and long-lasting process of social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on the research project APREN-DO aimed at exploring how secondary school teachers learn. Using an inclusive research approach and visual and narrative methods, we conducted the study with teachers rather than focusing on teachers. Twenty-eight secondary school teachers in the province of Barcelona (Spain) created their learning cartographies, showing what, how, where, with whom, and with what they learn. They then narrated their cartographies and discussed the notions of learning and educational practice in the 21st century. This paper summarizes the results and conclusions about teachers' learning environments, specificities and considerations regarding their learning, and their thoughts about educational practices. Finally, we present and discuss teachers' reflections and proposals for redesigning educational practice taking into account the need to contemplate the different literacies and competences that exist in today's society, encouraging student participation based on their interests and particularities, providing a space for affections and emotions, and prioritizing the personalization of students' learning and the skill of learning to learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of marine spatial planning (hereafter: MSP) for Croatia is essential, considering the coastline length and the increasing usurpation of coastal and marine space. MSP is more than a process that regulates the activities on the sea. It is an analytical approach to the setup of human activities in the marine area. As a maritime country, Croatia has ratified the Protocol on Integrated Coastal Zone Management and undertook the obligations of the Barcelona Convention. However, an appropriate document has not yet been made that would enable quality management of marine space. MSP and its onshore version contribute to the establishment and development of various activities, taking into account environmental, natural, economic, and sociological criteria. MSP is a continuation of spatial planning of the mainland area and must undoubtedly consider the more expansive coastal environment and the activities there. One of the tools in marine area mapping is the Geographic Information System (GIS), which has proven to be a very high quality and effective tool, especially in decision-making processes. The authors analyze the existing legal framework for marine spatial planning. Particular emphasis is placed on the obligations facing the Republic of Croatia to implement marine spatial planning. Given that the paper seeks to determine the advantages of MSP implementation using modern tools in marine area mapping, the authors in the third part discuss the benefits of using GIS as an acceptable tool in mapping marine space and provide recommendations for further actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Outcomes in the form of rates, fractions, proportions and percentages often appear in various fields. Existing beta and simplex distributions are frequently unable to exhibit satisfactory performances in fitting such continuous data. This paper aims to develop the normalised inverse Gaussian (N‐IG) distribution proposed by Lijoi, Mena & Prünster (2005, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 100, 1278–1291) as a new tool for analysing continuous proportional data in (0,1) and renames the N‐IG as proportional inverse Gaussian (PIG) distribution. Our main contributions include: (i) To overcome the difficulty of an integral in the PIG density function, we propose a novel minorisation–maximisation (MM) algorithm via the continuous version of Jensen's inequality to calculate the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters in the PIG distribution; (ii) We also develop an MM algorithm aided by the gradient descent algorithm for the PIG regression model, which allows us to explore the relationship between a set of covariates with the mean parameter; (iii) Both the comparative studies and the real data analyses show that the PIG distribution is better when comparing with the beta and simplex distributions in terms of the AIC, the Cramér–von Mises and the Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests. In addition, bootstrap confidence intervals and testing hypothesis on the symmetry of the PIG density are also presented. Simulation studies are conducted and the hospital stay data of Barcelona in 1988 and 1990 are analysed to illustrate the proposed methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical analysis of point processes often assumes that the underlying process is isotropic in the sense that its distribution is invariant under rotation. For point processes on ℝ2, some tests based on the K‐function and nearest neighbour orientation function have been proposed to check such an assumption. However, anisotropy and directional analysis need proper caution when dealing with point processes on linear networks, as the implicit geometry of the network forces particular directions that the points of the pattern have to necessarily meet. In this paper, we adapt such tests to the case of linear networks and discuss how to use them to detect particular directional preferences, even at some angles that are different from the main angles imposed by the network. Through a simulation study, we check the performance of our proposals under different settings, over a linear network and a dendrite tree, showing that they are able to precisely detect the directional preferences of the points in the pattern, regardless the type of spatial interaction and the geometry of the network. We use our tests to highlight the directional preferences in the spatial distribution of traffic accidents in Barcelona (Spain), during 2019, and in Medellin (Colombia), during 2016. [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]

A major challenge in the development of new cycling infrastructure is the design of intersections that are safe, appropriately used, and inclusive. In this paper we study how cyclists interact with existing street design at intersections in Barcelona. We observed rule compliance (n = 5,063) and desire lines (n = 5,082) at six intersections over 12 weekdays. We find that 78.9% of cyclists comply with intersection rules. Rule incompliance is associated with the gender of the cyclists, the directionality of the bike lanes that intersect, traffic signals, and performing a turn. Our analysis of desire lines through the intersections illustrate that incompliant behavior is driven by a need for uninterrupted travel, and highlight systemic and design features that contribute to incompliance. We suggest ways to improve intersection design and safety: i) prioritize unidirectional bike lanes; ii) optimize traffic lights, and; iii) anticipate cyclists' desired trajectories when designing new cycling infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the location patterns of audio-visual communication firms, a cultural and creative industry that includes activities related to motion picture, video, and television programme production, post-production and projection activities, as well as sound recording and music publishing activities. Firms in the industry tend to agglomerate in the core of large metropolitan areas to benefit from the economies arising from this clustering. Using Mercantile Register data, our results indicate a strong agglomeration pattern at the core of the Barcelona metropolitan area, as well as close inter-industry linkages with other cultural and creative industries. This location behaviour is explained by path dependence processes rather than as the result of cluster-based policies to encourage the concentration of such firms in some areas of the city. In view of these results, policy measures aiming to foster firms' competitivity should be more selective and target the specific areas preferred by audio-visual communication firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We study a community health policy on disadvantaged neighborhoods of Barcelona. • Deployment was quasi-random, allowing to identify causal effects. • We find a reduction of intimate-partner and drug crimes, with different timing. • Evidence suggests that these results are due to the bolstering of community ties. • We show how non-traditional policies can also reduce local crime. Recent evidence indicates that alternative policies based on building community can reduce crime, especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods. In this paper we study the effects on local crime rates of bolstering community ties. We take advantage of the quasi-random deployment of a community health policy (Barcelona Salut als Barris , BSaB) that aims to improve health outcomes and reduce inequalities in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods through community-based initiatives. To test whether BSaB reduces crime, we follow a difference-in-differences approach and make use of detailed data from local police and Barcelona City Council administrative records. We find that BSaB significantly reduces a category we term "intimate crimes" in the short term and drug crimes in the long term. The young offender crime rate is also lowered. Evidence suggests that this is due to tighter-knit communities. These results provide evidence in favor of non-traditional crime prevention policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]