LOGICS AND PROJECTUAL SPACES OF A METROPOLIS, BARCELONA 1976-1992 CARLES LLOP,
Architect, Professor, Department of Urbanism and Spatial Planning Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
SUMMARY
1. Introduction 2. The physical and structural changes in the period of 1976-1992, towards a definition of a new spatial structure of the central Metropolitan Area
3. Changes , reorientation and logics of projection 4. Projected metropolitan spaces of Barcelona 4.1 Non-local spaces of the metropolis. The networks of relation, the system of cities
ABSTRACT Entre 1976 i 1992 l’organització metropolitana ha produït un seguit de canvis estructurals que han transformat la relació entre les àrees centrals i els entorns metropolitans. El canvi de contingut dels «territoris geogràfics i morfològics», de les «peces estructurants» i «elements arterials» i dels «espais incerts», ha articulat un sistema territorial obert on s’ha produït tant l’ocupació dels buits intermunicipals com el creixement difós en el territori. Aquesta situació imposa reorientacions pel que fa a les lògiques projectuals. D’una banda, posant més l’èmfasi sobre els procediments metodològics que sobre les solucions tancades. Són les lògiques d’ordre projectual, discursives i processuals. D’una altra, contemplant nous aparells conceptuals i nous recursos de projecte per explorar una forma que ja no és urbana però que tampoc no és rural. Apareixen així espais projectuals a escala metropolitana: els «espais il·locals», temes sense materialització física clara que s’han d’entendre com a espais de projecte; els «espais identificats», geogràfics, morfològics i peces estructurants del territori; els «espais expectants o latents», escenaris de la nova arquitectura metropolitana. Entre 1976 y 1992 la organización metropolitana ha producido una serie de cambios estructurales que han transformado la relación entre las áreas centrales y los entornos metropolitanos. El cambio de contenido de los «territorios geográficos y morfológicos», de las «piezas estructurantes» y «elementos arteriales» y de los «espacios inciertos» ha articulado un sistema territorial abierto donde se ha producido tanto la ocupación de los intersticios municipales como el crecimiento difuso en el territorio. Esta situación impone reorientaciones en cuanto a las lógicas proyectuales. En primer lugar, poniendo el énfasis en los procedimientos metodológicos más que sobre las soluciones cerradas. Son las lógicas de orden proyectual, discursivas y procesuales. En segundo lugar, contemplando nuevos aparatos conceptuales y nuevos recursos de proyecto para explorar una forma que ya no es urbana, pero que tampoco es rural. Aparecen así espacios proyectuales a escala metropolitana: los «espacios ilocales», temas sin materialización física clara que se han de entender como espacios de proyecto; los «espacios identificados», geográficos, morfológicos y piezas estructurantes del territorio; los «espacios expectantes o latentes», escenarios de la nueva arquitectura metropolitana. Entre 1976 et 1992 l’organisation métropolitaine a produit une série de changements structurels qui ont transformé la relation entre les aires centrales et la banlieu. Le changement de contenu des «territoires géographiques et morphologiques », des «pièces structurantes» et des «éléments artériels» et des «espaces incertains» a articulé un système territorial ouvert où s’est développé tant l’occupation des interstices municipaux comme l’accroissement diffus sur le territoire. Cette situation impose de nouvelles orientations quant aux logiques projectuelles. D’une part, en posant plus d’emphase sur les processus méthodologiques que sur les solutions fermées. Ce sont les logiques d’ordre projectuel, discursives et de processus. D’autre part, en tenant compte des nouveaux appareils conceptuels et des nouvelles ressources de projet pour explorer une forme qui n’est ni urbaine ni rurale. C’est ainsi qu’apparaissent des espaces projectuels à échelle métropolitaine: les «espaces illocaux», thèmes sans matérialisation physique claire qui doivent se comprendre comme des espaces de projet; les «espaces identifiés», géographiques, morphologiques et pièces structurantes du territoire; les «espaces expectants ou latents», scénario de la nouvelle architecture métropolitaine. Between 1976 and 1992 the organisation of the metropolis has been affected by a series of structural changes that have transformed the relationship between the central city and the metropolitan rings. The change in content of the «geographical and morphological territories», of the «structuring elements» and the «arterial elements» as well as of the «undefined spaces» has given rise to an open regional system in which both settlement of the areas between municipal centres and diffuse growth within the region have occurred. This new situation has made necessary a reorientation of the logics of the projects undertaken. Firstly, less emphasis must be laid on closed solutions and more on methodological procedures, such as the logics of the project, the discourse and the process. Secondly, new conceptual apparatus and new planning resources are required to explore a form that is neither urban nor rural. New spaces will emerge on a metropolitan scale: the «non-local spaces», which lack clear physical materialisation and should be conceived of as an arena for new projects; the «identified spaces» –the geographical, morphological and structural elements of the region–; the «expectant or latent spaces», which constitute the setting for the new metropolitan architecture.
CARLES LLOP
LOGICS AND SPACES PROJECTED OF A METROPOLIS, BARCELONA 1976-1992
1. Introduction The crisis of the traditional metropolitan model, first in the case of the American city and later on in the European, centered around the idea of unlimited growth of the metropolis, which is reflected in the alteration of the growth patterns and the spatial distribution of individuals, activities and movements, as well as forms of local government, has caused a process of change in the content and methods of the planning and the traditional urban project of the metropolitan city. The debate on “metropolitan peripheries” has been present in the research works and related publications in Europe in recent years, with a specific content towards studies or assessments of the American experience or the urban aglomerates of the Third World: With respect to the first, the condition of late comers in the process of development, growth and industrialization; and with respect to the second, the differential conditions of the production of the city due to the economic imbalances between regions in the North-South axis. In this disciplinary context, the study and exploration of the reality of the actual metropolitan reality of Barcelona will come to contribute with specific contriubutions of our urban culture; an interesting approach for representing the capacity to establish mechanisms for comparing with the metropolies of the world. Ones has to try in order to understand both the causes and the changes produced as well as the new characteristics / dimensions of the present situation, with its spatial effects and the modalities of intervention, with the intention to contrbute to a progressive transformation of the metropolitan reality and its related project. In the face of a chaotic and speculative growth (decentered and strongly vertebrated) of the preceding years, in the period between 1976 and 1992 new material conditions begin to emerge for articulating a metropolitan polinuclear, based more on a structure of networks than the continuities of the urban , having a tendency towards so called diffuse urbanization1 (with a specific characterization sui generis, and not comparable with the anglosaxonic or north- american city) that breaks with the patterns
of behaviour of the suburbial /suburbanized or in the best case fragmented city, that often we have associated with a model of pathological development of our cities. The interest for investigating and contributing to the theory about the diffuse city, stems in the possibility of explaining and rationalizing how the new forms of life and similarly new socioeconomic situation is leading to new uses that are situated on the territory in a diverse fashion to the phenomenons traditionally detected, and therefore creates new forms and new logiques for planning. The progresive loss of the defining value of the demographic factor and the increase in the factor of spatial distribution for defining the range of an agglomeration due to phenomenons of dispersion , configure new urban geographies and complex territorial systems, much more ambigous from the spatial point of view. The planning task cannot be on the margin of the conceptual depth that exists behind these processes, these mutations. 2. The physical and structural changes in the period of 1976-1992, towards a definition of a new spatial structure of the central Metropolitan Area. In Barcelona, the supposedly natural territory has undergone great transformations since long time ago, reaching the point of exhaustion (think in the case of the delta de Besós), and now is the moment to talk of the other territories, that present a mixed definition, with attributes sometimes extreme and opposite. Territories that have a natural and artificial composition at the same time; real (constructed material forms, and thus tangible) or virtual (universe of relations) invariant ( evidence of geomorphology) and constantly under transformation (land uses); Primary (the basic The references to models that behave as «a diffuse city» it is necessary to search them in the experience of the North American East coast, the swiss high plateau, the Dutch Randstadt, as well as the methodological references that have orientated and stimulated more this research are the works of S. Boeri ; A. Lanzani; E. Marini (1993); Il territorio che cambia. Ambienti, paesaggi e immagini della regione milanese, Milá, Editrice Abitare Segesta spa. 1
Figure 1. Physical & structural changes in the metropolitan area, 1969-1986
elements, the structures that constitute the urban grid that permit flows and structure the exchange) and Derived (the urban fabric served); Identifiable (with consistent architecture and the capacity to desccribe their materiality) and amorphous (with no recognizable form, imprecise/vague and in discordance with assimilated formal laws.
tant from the expectations and the actual functioning of the tunnel) permit to think that the “corridor model” of the valley of Vallés, based fundamentaly in the highway B-30, starts to function although the articulation between the public facilities, endowments (dotaciones), the residential areas and the local population is far from functioning as a continious system.
A global lecture of the plans of threads of growth and transformation (see figures 1,2,3: Changes in the spatial structure of the central metropolitan area 19691986, 1976-1986, 1986-1992 ) allows us to witness the metropolitan organization that starts to go ahead of the General Metropolitan Plan, and that is structured in focal points and specific directionalities:
b) The urban extension/expansion is based ,generally speaking, in the prolongation of the existing urban infrastructure as far as metropolitan municipalities is concerned, beyond the case of some residential or mixed paquetes, singular for their size and the type of process with which they have been generated (e.g. Villa Olímpica, Montigalá, etc) and thus as a consequence it makes it difficult to interprete, or put to value residential operations that can be emblematic for new concepts of the city.
a) The consequence direct of the changes experienced in the period of study, is the radical transformation of the connection of the central areas with the metropolitan environments/areas and the regional context. The substantial reduction of the communication time through the interventions in infrastructures changes the functioning and form of the central metropolitan area. The loss of the specific weight of the Ringroads of the road network of Barcelona, due to the centrifugal organization derived from the belts, displaces the centrality in nearby or well communicated enclaves. The opening of the tunnel of Vallvidrera as we have already seen produces a reduction in the distances, but evenmore the physical distance and the perception that one has of the mountain of Collserola as a barrier or a front. The transformation in the municipality of Sant Cugat de Vallés (clearly more impor-
c) It is noted the progressive occupation and filling of the existing interstices. Nevertheless there still exist territories impassables, due to topography or accessibility, that require big options of infrastructure of general character, that by not exisiting make more difficult the process of putting in play this territories. The conditioned territory as an argumentative base for the difference between the formation of metropolitn areas and specifically that of Barcelona, as a prototype example of a metropolitan city that has not been produced by the extension of the generic urban grid in the territory, but instead from the aglomeration “by layers”, associated with the original population centers, based on the construction of in-
Figure 2. Physical & structural changes in the metropolitan area, 1979-1986
Figure 3. Physical & structural changes in the metropolitan area, 1986-1992
frastructures that have led to a model of implementation by pockets or packets, fragmented operations with respect to the idea of the sum, morphological autonomy with regard to the correspondence of its urbanizing elements, and their respective characteristics of density, typology and function. The infilling of the voids accompany simultaneously the permanent urban transformation.
zations of metropolitan municipalities, although the forms of autoconstruction and of marginality have diminished radically, given that the processes of city construction are more ruled. However the phenomenon of dispersion is generalized in the metropolitan area and region, given that many of these operations are produced departing from the extension of preexistent infrastructures.
d) The diffused growth of the isolated or low density residence, continues being significant to the urbani-
e) Few are the unitary operations that are developed in the from of big interventions: atllòria-Montigalà , Vi-
lla Olímpica, Polígonos Mas Azul, Polígono TV3 en Sant Just Desvern, Polígono Pedrosa en L’Hospitalet. The size of these metropolitan operations is therefore rather fragmented.
as formal entities: The orographic systems, the rural spaces, the seafront, the metropolitan river channels that become formal spaces with great firmness and quality, and a definitive and durable vocation.
f) A singular aspect is the occupation of territories that are in finalist systems from the point of view of the rural use, orographic systems or natural territories (like the series of operations in the delta of the Llobregat), some of them legitimated for planing purposeds, but addressed in their validity from environmental or landscape preservation/conservation positions.
-The morphologic territories establish formal systems that permit us to identify prototypical urban forms, linked by a diverse order: conurbated urban systems, edge urban systems, structuring and suturing urban systems, lineal growths and along the territorial grid, dispersed and intermediate formations of the urban grid.
g) Big buildings/equiment continue being implanted in the territory over linear infrastructures with a lot of circulatory flows and high accessibility principal canals of the metropolitan road network h) On horseback between the two great periods that we have subdivided in the period of study, we will distinguish with a singular aspect the inertia of the geographical spaces that present gran resistance in being urbanized (Collserola, or for example the territories where the «south leg» of the road belts passes). The metropolitan city of Barcelona does not have an unitary image. It can not be thought as the nineteenth-century city where from a center matrix annexes centralities , and links new territories concentrically. The metropolitan Barcelona has many images that respond to many «forms», only capable of being agglutinated from the individual, particular and interested use, and for so much, generically is a polyformal reality that exhibition of a way or of another, depending on the type of narrator who attempts to explain it. In the metropolitan Barcelona conditions for mutation of the classical urban space are present, and principles are detected, sanctioned by the international metropolitan culture, for the generation of another reality, of a new spatial configuration. The forms define the roles that they have in the articulation of the metropolitan city: heterogeneous with respect to the parts and the pieces that belong to it; discontinuous with respect to the constitutive and diversified fabrics; unclear regarding the identification and categorization of its elements; unequal in the quality of its components: - The geographic territories are grouped in morphological units that configure areas clearly singled out
-The structuring pieces that we defined as the basic elements of the anatomy take shape how the metropolitan forms that have kept on precipitating along the specific history of the metropolitan formation of Barcelona, and have constructed the necessary infrastructure for its condition. They are the new elements that turn up as results of the infrastructural advances, of improvement of the accessibility and the mobility. -The arterial elements (train networks, high speed, ways|railways, roundabouts, interbarterers and tunnels), the «nodes» (centrality, intermodal areas of transport and areas of high accessibility) and the «corridors» (corridor of the Vallès, interpolar connection, or territorial hinge of the fourth belt) ensure the connectivity of the formentioned territories, establishing placements for the dispersion of the functions over the territory. -The uncertain spaces (urban edges, isolated enclaves, urban and territorial voids and microvoids, and spaces in the shadow) are unclassifiable spaces that remember the permanent mutability of the social behaviors in the form of evaluating and using the physical space, and consequently, that of the places of the metropolitan city that are offered to serve new uses. 3. Changes, re-orientation and projectuals logics The Barcelona central metropolitan area has experienced in the last years a strong process of urban transformation, marked by the loss of the specific weight of the demographic growth in benefit of the metropolitan rings, and in exchange, and almost in a form inversely proportional, a greater level, in quantity and quality of requalification of the urban fabric and infrastructure. It does not result as strange then that for the explanation of the urban processes formulations belonging to the restorative/repairing tech-
niques or disciplines are used: Sewing, articulating, binding, welding; because the terminological baggage of the urban studies discipline has to go incorporating constantly new paradigms and definitions, necessary for conceptualizing the logic of planning and intervention. The reorientation of the metropolitan project will only be possible then, if it surpasses the static visions of a metropolitan reality, the geographical limits and competences in benefit of a widening of the planning horizons: “problem spaces/area” instead of physical spaces; articulating functions instead of zoning, referential models of the metropolitan forms instead of closed-end formal projects. The reorientation of the metropolitan project will come then marked by a clear interaction between the possible processes and logic of intervention, adjusted to each specific reality, since the metropolitan territory is a territorial system every time more open, where conditions of competition are offered among all of its parts, because in all of the enclaves of the metropolitan geography processes of modification can be generated that change the actual content and are converted in spaces of renewed metropolitan interest that goes beyond the obsolete concept of the periphery. The reality of the urban peripheries has permited accepting situations and realities of the city and of architecture, non-conventional, that provide richness in terms of new planning contents, because they are unknown situations that have to be addressed again, elaborating a genuine reflexion with instruments for comprehending and specific to each project, created in each new situation. Because to talk of the periphery maybe is to talk of a quality that is not absolute, to talk of conditions each time genuine in each of the situations 2.
ambiguous spaces where the public form of our cities comes at play 3.
With no intention to undervalue the values of the compact city, new centres of disciplinary interest appear in these new situations, many in the new physical condition of the the space: the space of the urban voids, the abandoned or periurban areas; or with respect to the forms utilized, appropriated and semantized these uncertain places of a complex condition,
- The urban landscape of the great postindustrial ciy tends to be discontinuous and difuse and in contrary the city governmnet needs less incertitude when it comes to taking decisions and marking the limits of competences and the attribution of functions. For that
“The periphery is the limit among what lacks sense and what is significant, or among the unlimited meaning/sense and the limited one. A border area, which is nor dense nor stable, but rather a membrane through which, the significant and what is not significant are exchanged and reversed. As the border, the urban periphery is the gross side of the space: full of uniinterpreted marks”. C.J. Christiansen (1992); «El desierto, el centro y la periferia», UR Revista n.º 9-10, LUB, Barcelona, p. 6. 3 Manuel Solà-Morales; «Espais públics/Espais col·lectius», Quaderns 198, Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, gener-febrer, 1993. 2
The reformulation, the reorientation of the metropolitan project, has two clear spatial objectives: to straighten the antinomy and marginality of the suburban landscape, respecting liturgically the territory, restoring the values of environmental quality, democratizing the offer of the city-service, making possible the access to culture, fostering exhange, facilitating the flow of information and knowledge. The metropolis today is still a metaphor for the kind city, where the size is not a determining factor, and is domesticated by mobility, where the big scale does not provoque the creation of pockets or waste, but instead transforms with a great diffusing effect the new values, the obsolete spaces and it recreates and reinvents them. The reinvention of the possibilities of the metropoly do not merely exist in space. It exists in the capacity to operate with a logic of intervention, with renewed planning logic that improves the living conditions. Our training has been marked excessively by models that codify the planned spaces, the themes of the projects aand associate them with planning forms and types established and defined. Faced with this attitude, the invitation with decoding the ways to procees, illuminates a new intelectual path, surely less secure, less stable, but in all cases, richer: continuing exploring with a new restlessness the city and the territorry, interprete using new words and new discursive forms...4 The reflections that according to my judgement sustain the possible path for a metropolitan reorientation, as territory of a planning nature are:
«ciò che oggi alcuni piani stanno cercando di fare è arrestare il ciclo: tentare di esprimere nuovamente un reale che percepiamo come profondamente modificato rispetto l’epoca dei grandi codici, ma la configurazione ed i valori del quale ancora non conosciamo perché non abbiamo provato a modificarne, a riprogettarne sezioni rilevanti. Essi cercano di posare sul territorio e la città un nuovo sguardo; di construire nuovi resoconti delle esplorazioni compiute; di ricostruire nouvi ‘temi’; di interpretarli usando nuovi parole e nuove forme discorsive che riescano ad intersecare, giudicare e promuovere nuove pratiche sociali; di produrre reazioni che aumentino le nostre conoscenze». Bernardo Secchi (1989); «Codificare, ridurre, banalizzare», a Un progetto per l’Urbanistica, Torí, Giulio Einaudi editore spa. 4
reason, the metropolitan territory, the limits of which are indeterminate, suggests continuously new lectures, in function of the nature of the specific problems in quesion, and is taking shape as the fundamental place of the planning relection.
project are not regulated and disciplinary preestablished. The metropolitan project, every time more, shares some conditions of diffuse planning with diverse logics, which we could synthesize in the followings points:
- The urban planning and more specifically the metropolitan comes conditioned by the changing economic processes and the consequent mutations on the social fabric and therefore the urban and territorial fabric. The heterogeneity of the processes that contrasts with the slow capacity to adapt to the changes, and with the operative fragmentation of the institutions when it comes to making agreements and managing the themes of the big city. Also in the the metropolitan territory, the planning discipline is converted, conditioned by a operative that is not lineal , that is not predetermined by the models to be applied, but instead , on the contrary, stays condicioned to bifurcated paths as professor Secchi indicates, open paths that do not necessarily have an end. “ The design of the plan, including its technical materials/materiality, becomes an attempt to establish new relationships between places and times, including the tumult of the differences and the rules of repetition”.5 The modern urban metropolitan project is not a project that is constructed based on forms, but a project constructed based on logics.
a) Logics of planning order. The characterization of the recent planning orders has to do more with new concepts that are not based in formalities, but in intentionalities; these intentions as anticipated visions or that tend to explain what will happen through the implementations of the proposals. but that necessarily they are processuals and avoid the typological definitions, the serial proposals, the repetition. The terminology that we need in order to define these logics is a discursive terminology, that explains the methodological proceedings, instead of closed solutions: structural configurations, articulations and transformations, vertebrations and links, relevancies and centralities.
- The contrast and heterogeneity of the decisions can manage to be redirected though the harmonization between agents, based or determined by the «logics of the planning order» that behind the transformations have to function so much on a physical as well as an instrumental level for solving the problems of the big city. It is a matter of accepting and putting in practice a break with the past that legitimates the «gradual expansion of the peripheries and the spatial and functional conservation of what is consolidaded» 6 and the exploration for new logics of intervention: «logics of planning order» and «new logics», in the sense of solutions not-closed (to the metropolitan problems), but instead approaches that «identify problems in the key of opportunity» and that generate rapidly mechanisms convenience/ease to make open proposals evolve while adapting, increase the results and that they fit to the public, private or mixed operating capacity. The conditions of the metropolitan B. Secchi (1988); «La machina non banale: una postfazione », a Un progetto per l’Urbanística, Torí, Giulio Einaudi editore spa, p. 365. 6 B. Dente & others (1990); «Metropoli per progetti?», a Metropoli per progetti I. Bologna, Il Mulino. 5
Structural configurations in the finalist sense of the acceptance of attributing or ordering determinate elements of the territory as pieces to be left unchanged or undisturbed, and that they have to serve as the negative of other spaces that can be modified, transformed. Also in the sense of determining interventions that condition the form of the territory, because of their implantation, and that modify its functioning from the moment that it is ordered and care is taken for its planning and management. The establishment of the road networks is one of the most complex operations, but at the same time more effective and transcendental for the metropolitan order, in the measure that is the basis, of the functioning and the relations in a territory that is characterized by the mobility and the exchange between the city, its parts and the diverse places of the territory. One of the examples of structural configuration has been the project of the ring roads of Barcelona, that on one hand has served to improve the functioning of the flows of Barcelona -therefore of the metropolitan center- and on the other hand has also improved the accessibility of the metropolitan cores; other structural configurations have derived from the opening of the tunnels of Vallvidrera, the ordering of the coastal zone, of the park of Collserola, the rural space. In all cases, the object of the project is the ample territory, with a high level of geographical and territorial significance of a supramunicipal character, although in some cases certain municipalities do not share the same space. Articulations, in the etymological sense of the verb, to articulate: «join, connect two parts (of a body, of a
sum), especially not in a fixed way, but leaving them a determined amount of play/freedom». The significant operations make reference to those interventions that present effects of surpassing of barrier elements, improvement in the urban accessibility, the diffusion of public services through the successful placement or resituation of public equipments. It is necessary to consider them as articulating operations linking consolidated urban parts and peri-urban territories or of uncertain formalization. We can cite as relevant and known examples of urban articulation, for the effect that they have produced in the transformation of urban areas , that exceeds the area of work , project or intervention, the following: The project for the river of Besos, an urban river among margins - from Santa Coloma until Sant Adriá de Besós- the second belt of Santa Coloma e Gramenet, the area of equipment de Can Zam, the project of the area of Montigalá in Badalona. In diverse scales and sizes, all of them coincide in the strategic aspect of the project, in the sense that the objectives pursued, produce from the beginning multiplier effects of improvement and urban renewal. Transformations. Under this concept are united diverse forms that operate in the evolution of the urban fabric and individual areas with a determined level of consolidation of its structure, but due to motives of loss of specific weight of its predominant uses, or due to its obsolescence and that of material elements that constitute it, it needs to define strategies and put them under a process of actualization and renovation. In a territory that every time is left without space available for new expansion, and that in some municipalities it has already run out of qualified/designated surface and does not have more to integrate the processes of urbanization, one has to consider that the urban transformations (not solely talking of fabrics) should be produced with a continuity. The following stand out: The urban renewal operation with a process of substitution, the operations of urban rehabilitation and improvement of the existing/available stocks, the extensions for the urban grid and residencial areas, the extensions of the urban grid to to complete fragmented extensions, concrete transformation with a certain autonomy from the urban fabric. Singularly, the case of tranformation of big urban areas - like the case of Ciutat Vella- has a dimension that cannont be explained from a simple planning logic. Instead various logics intervene, utilizing a great variety of instruments, both for planning and executing. It is of our interest then to highlight with this example a decisive question: Is an idea-force of «transformation» neces-
sary? Because of that the processes of transformation have a dimension of a «program», in the sense that it entails a sum of factors and incidences that they will make it really possible, and not only as a statement of an urbanistic planing or a project proposal. Vertebrations and links. Integrated actions that address the resolution of complex urban spaces, providing a clarifications of the profile of the program to be developed, connecting networks of all types, especially optimizing the road facilities that improve mobility, constructing points of interchange of modes transport, revalorating the possibility of using and rating the urban image of a sector, establishing conditions of urban centrality. This type of interventions influences the recalification of immediate fabrics, often modifying its functioning. changing the environmental perception that it can have or provoke an increase in the quality of the image or urban symbology of the space. It transforms the urban backs in active fronts or the urban landscape, working with the reinvention of the free space. The fundamental instrument in this logic of intervention is the road design, connecting the basic road network to order the street grid and configure the pattern of the free space, ordering the distribution of the area to implement the different uses. The creation of urban links presuposes also working with a programme of urban equipments, taking advantage of the operation to recover urban containers and utilize them for new uses, or construct new architectures for new equipment. As a significative and well studied example one can cite the Node of Trinity (Nudo de la Trinidad) that organizes an infrastructure of modal distribution of the metropolitan road network, making reference to a peripheral area that is dotted with a high formal quality and given the difficulties in planning the organization of the free space, pretendig to evade the marginality of residuality that a lot of these spaces end up having. Relevancy and centrality - One of the more singularcontributions of the municipal urban planning in the pre-olympic period of Barecelona, in the frame of a global strategy of recovering the city, from a point of view of economic attractions and the dynamization of the activities, and based in the logic of “access to the urban spaces more qualified and the best fed information systems. It makes reference to an idea of arhitectonic containers, traspased to the urban dimension and in terms of urban space. The activities to be developed in a central space, are not regulated, instead with a predominant form it is commercial,
tertiary and service type of uses. The exploration of the potential of the condition of the area, environment , and own values eah sector define the potential of each intervention. Developed by public initiate, in a first instance, the areas of centrality require the contribution of the sum of the initiatives to capitalize the investment capacity and at the same time implicate the collective consensus of the operators, not only in the phase of investment and launching of the operation, but also later on as a mechanism to maintain alive the created urban spaces. The actives of an area of centrality are found in the capacity to discover it before it becomes evident to urban operators and therefore it is possible to obtain land availability not so much in terms of property as in the ease to focus the management mechanism to develop the centrality. The centre absolute and unique, the monocentrism of the classic city, in the modern urbanism has lost force and has derived towards an nuclear atomization of interrelated centres though the networks and canals. Many metropolitan places, even some peripheral, manage an urban and territorial protagonism that till now was never considered, that leads a enrichment of metropolitan reality more multifaceted, and in reality polynuclear.
transformation and present themselves as potential spaces for creating new urban centres.
The emergencies are the new urbanistic logics that reveal the quality of the spaces that convert enclaves to locate itself there or result highly attractive to the demand of the users and becoming central points, nodal elements of the city or of the territory. The state of latency of determinate places, all of a sudden or though a time of maturation, transforms in opportunity to recreate a new place of the city. The spaces that stand out are ones that basic road operations have generated: the borders of the belts that have not turned into residual spaces, and have added to the existing empty spaces, the reconvertions or reorientation of the possibilities of use such as the PolĂgono Pedrosa de L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, well situtated in relation with the Fira de Barcelona, on the line of the Gran Via and in a favorable direction to the Prat Airport, or the revalueation of the Sagrera sector, that when the development of the plan of Sant Andreu was being studied the availability of the terrains of Renfe did not exist, the real impact of the planning and installing a high speed train in Barcelona was not not known. Some time later though the territory of the Sagrera is converted to an Emergency with a high level of possilibities for a new urban space in the metropolitan city. There are not spontaneeous acts, but a strategy of a project , based on detecting the active elements of a place/space, study its possibilities for
The size of the operations is not the determining factor of the inducing capacity for urban regeneration, but is more in the potentiality of the uses and of the capacity of the projects to create fertile dynamics of activity, of form, and of quality. The scale of the project is every time more a universe not prefixed, and wonderful field of adjustment during the course of the project, attending to the expectations, exploring in the potentiality, putting in relief that of the specific place that is the most strategic material in relation to the systems of the metropolis. Open logics for exploring, for inventing the conditions of the project and of the materiality of the discontinuous metropolis.
The singularities are operations are prepared for reconverting uncertain spaces that offer themselves to the metropolitan scene to produce effects of urban and territorial regeneration to create expectations that induce synergies that are added to the developing agents. One of the projects in course of development that exemplifies better these new urbanistic logics that put more emphasis in the attitude with which it approaches the formalization or the compositive charge of the project, is the proposal of the Port of Badalona. In a situation of an industrial fabric in regression, an urban plot of the Eixample little qualified and in the context of Badalona, with little protagonism in the metropolitan area, the project of the port acts strategically in two levels: emphatize the possibilities to act reinventing the urban appeal of the city, and morphologically has an action that sets the coast as a space to be reappropriated stretched itslelf until the new location of the sport pavilion; creating like this a centrality for Badalona and a metropolitan centrality, apart from reactivating the mentioned area.
b) Open logics: explorations, inventions. We are in conditions of producing breaks with the old logics and to construct a new conceptual device. We are to work in new conditions, and for the invention of new planning resources, based on the exploration of the new bases of the concept and the metropolitan formalities. In the same way that the metropolis that is managed in the twenties, it the thirties it has a political, artistic, and finally cultural answer; the new metropolis is working under conditions of a new projectuality. And it is as long asthe questions deal with central themes that are not that of the traditional city, with respect to the territories, the multi-scale conditions,
the prototypes and artefacts in one way that is not urban, but at the same time it is not either rural. the exploration is not only a question of vocabulary, how to name the new realities of the contemporary city, but the logic that implicate the investigation of the applied work. For this reason, it will be necessary for the public operators to facilitate the task of investigating in the projects of major entity in the metropolitan area. It is necessary to remember the experiences of exploration and invention, as in the case of the international competition of projects House|Housing and ciutat,7 that approaches the production of housing in mass in the urban context of renewal - the extension of the Diagonal of Barcelona from the square/node of the Glories until the sea. Beyond an exploration about the new artifacts of the housing based in the programmatic conditions, or mixed use, the competition stimulates the disciplinary worries to attend to the new urban reality, for approaching the planning process from the apparent disorder, but with ideas of renewed orders. The open laws of growth, that reply to formal abstract wills and to processual executions in the time; therefore, changing and adaptable. It is necessary to observe the competition like a sum of contributions. For me, there exists no unique solution (reserved, in any case, the actual execution, which will take years to materialize). The proposals, one by one and as a whole, are fragments and texts, conceptual devices and instruments of intervention, typologies and formal contexts that translate the disciplinary knowledge that its authors have acquired in the new reality of the complex city. The systematization of these experiences through the conceptual and physical proposals, and the vocabulary used, construct a planning knowledge that will serve us for approaching other situations, in other contexts, sharing a similarity: the vital and conceptual dispersion and the physical dispersion of the discontinuous metropolis. To explore the new reality of the metropolitan city, it is necessary that there exist the political conditions that would allow the overcoming of the administrative clearings and seeks the generation of platforms of interest for the metropolitan quality. 4. Espais projectuals metropolitans de Barcelona Concurs Internacional de Idees Habitatge i ciutat, organized by Association of Architects of Catalonia, with the following collaborating institutions : Town council of Barcelona, Generalitat de Catalunya, Ministry of Public works and the Association of Promoters and Constructors of Buildings of Barcelona. Published in Quaderns d’Arquitectura i Urbanisme, 1990. 7
In the succesives approaches that we have made eith respect to the problems of the metropolitan deed of Barcelona, we have tried a phenomenology that highlights these relevant subjects that have a translation through material forms, and should be the preferred object of the planning attention in a metropolitan scale. These are the «metropolitan projected spaces » of the new metropolis. Spaces of nature diverse, physical or virtual; of scope and of varied scales. The «il·locals spaces», the «identified spaces», and the «expectant or latent spaces» constitute one attempt to define the fields of planning, in which we will work at the years to come the metropolitan scale. 4.1. Il·locals spaces of the metropolis. The network of relation, the system of cities. Physically speaking, the metropolis of Barcelona is not diffuse because the system of networks of communication and mobility dont have a high level of diversification. The although recent works of infrastructure have started to started to decentralize the territory, beyond the central area, not only in activities, but also of stable residences. However, the loss of population in the center and the first metropolitan ring in benefit of the rest of the municipalities of the wide metropolitan area, is being seen like a tendency that will distribute more extensively the subject of the first residence, that moreover will be seen as favored due to the decrease in real time of the transfers. The frame of one more extense territory, constituted by the system of mature cities of Catalonia, is consolidating a new structure of centers of metropolitan subsystems -in any case, all of them depending on the Barcelona metròpolis-, that as a matter of fact is, every time more, the true frame of the barcelones metropolis. The construction of a regional rail network will reduce the time and state of interrelation between cities or points of residence or of activities in the Catalan territory, and the interrelation with Barcelona, that has to continuine consolidating its project of high territorial centrality, it will increase considerably. These tendencies explain the need to assume as «spaces of project» topics or subjects that constitute functional domains without one clear physical, materialization, biunivocal in terms of physical space or predetermined in relation to the territorial limits. Which the definite route of the high speed train? The reserve of space of the airport exchanges will be sufficient for the forecasts of the project of the delta
of the Llobregat? Examples of problems that generate «il·locals domains» that soar about the territory without a precise physical definition, since the time factor and the inherent problems of its complexity make its material concretion process to be in process It is necessary, apart , to think that the resolution of these problems has to be produced necessarily out of the strict limits of the central area, generating spatial delimitations of the project that appear strictly linked to the process of prefiguration of the solutions. There are no definitive preconceived spaces to solve the question of big scale of the metropolitan flows. The space results a concept il·local, that is being specified as the mechanisms of integration are adapted and, therefore, the resources of the modelling and of the techniques of simulation -to rehearse the scope and the material and formal implications of the reserves and territorial predictions - they are necessary tools to advance in the project the supports and the artifacts that these types of relations will generate. The geographical spaces, the morphological territories and the structuring pieces that we have portrayed in the previous chapters will continue being areas of the attention of metropolitan plannnig . They are what we call «identified spaces» because their possible evolution is depending on their adaptability to the new functions that have to develop. Spaces that are characterized by a process of constant adaptation and therefore transformation to the new demands, preserving, however, some components as invariants. The pressures of use on the territory to stand with the major proximity to the areas of major centrality and occupy in its case, broadening the compromised stain of the urbanization, to territories that originally had a vocation or aptitude, clearly contrary to the final destinay in which they have subjected, that will affect strongly this type of spaces. One of these identified spaces is the system of the river beds of the rivers that have traditionally been the corridors of entry in the central area of Barcelona. The urban sector of the Besòs river, which had its delta formation, today disappeared or at least disfigured, presents already another configuration in the metropolitan city, and the fact is that its current state passes more through its functionality as an urban river highly urbanized and not as a territorial river -although its dimension should be considered from this scale. The same process is happening in the river bed of the Llobregat river, where they keep on exis-
ting processes of occupation of the area of the lower Valley and of the delta because of the new demands for industrial land, expansion of the infrastructures, etc. One will have to consider also the vocation of the territories that have a structural configurator value and commit to their finalist destination, considering them as «projectuals spaces» that we will treat from the perspective of the preservation as elements that configure a landscape identifier of the metropolitan form that needs to be admit from productive functions to ludic functions, of pleasure, and to consider- them as systems to revalorize and regenerate. The spaces identified more clearly with this finalist vocation in the metropolitan form of Barcelona are: the Metropolitan Park of Collserola, the mountainous configurations of the Ordal, Garraf, the mountainrange of Marina; the treatment and the ordering of the coastal front, or the permanence of the rural space in the areas that are still consistent. It will be necessary, in the case of the «morphological territories»to establish the follow-up of the transformations that they are necessary for its modernization and adaptability to the new demands of the metropolitan centrality. The processes of renewal of the fabrics and obsolete urban plots will entail some effects of deconcentration with the occupation of new territories, beyond the central area and therefore counting with a more extensive dimension of the metropolitan city. Consequently, it will make the liberation of land possible in many areas of city, still today densified. This means that processes of transformation will continue being produced, of structuring and metropolitan articulation in the central areas. The transcendental spaces of the new metropolitan reality they turn up, however, where the new urbanistic logics discover the new values of the diffuse city, the city that exceeds the classical centrality, of monocèntric basis, and puts in value the multiplicity of positions in the territory of the metropolitan city. Because of that, what we call «expectant or latent spaces». have a special importance. We have to resort to the semantic definition to describe the projectuals conditions that exist behind these type of spaces. There is a concept diametrally opposed in etymological terms to the word latent that, makes it especially attractive for use in the planning language: the word foreseen. Latent versus foreseen. We feel that there are spaces that, from the point of
view of the role that they have, they are becoming obsolete. Others, contrarily, in spite that there is not a total objective basis, we guess that they will awake from their dormant state of detention, obsolescence and urban appeasement to be transformed to new places of activity, spaces of renewed vital architecture. A city with a historical depth, rich in urban attributes like the metropolitan Barcelona is, wakes in each operation of infrastructural construction an explosive series of spaces and territories where new expectations of use and of urban functionality are created , being or not being contemplated in the urbanistic planing. The feeling of a climbing of expectationsgenerated by the opening of the beltways and the tunnel of Vallvidrera has been equally or more intense with the one that they generated in their moment the B-30 and the To-18. This same phenomenon is being produced as an derivative effect of the construction of the A-16 and the articulation with the C-245, that generates new expectations of growth in the towns of Gavà, Viladecans and Saint Boi de Llobregat. The term «expectant», employed to describe this condition of possibilities that an action of a project or any line of action generate over one space, is useful to us for conceptualizing the fundamental condition fundamental of many metropolitan spaces, that will be the stages of the new metropolitan architecture. However, we have to consider that there are areas that will have to be protected from the possible expectations that can transform or degenerate their specific present condition. It will be necessary to observe a discreet ignorance in their setting, as metropolitan developments. It is a matter of a strategy that determines that in the sum of the metropolis there are “key areas” where the right conditions exist to intervene, to increase the resources of a good urban functioning, because they affect the whole metropolitan organism. These spaces constitute the prefered places of metropolitan attention and its them that are being or will be objects of planing in order to conduce their own funcionality towards the metropolitan city. Among the studied examples , we can cite the “transformed delta of Llobregat” that presents the problem of making compatible the growth of communication infrastructures, the improvement of the services in Barcelona as a competitive tertiary and logistic centre. This space has to integrate in the delta activities like the airport city, the directional centre of el Prat de Llobregat, the zone of activities and logistics of Zona Franca-Port. The deferred effects of this maximum
concentracion of activity and intermodal accessibility, to qualify as a node of centrality of the system of international projection of Catalunya and evenmore the mediterranen system, provokes a transfiguration and adaptation to a model of a territorial river, under conditions of high urbanization in singular stretches, striving for the maximum integration of the rural territories of the protected delta. The lower valley of Llobregat and the delta are presented as territorial units of high activity with respect to the competitive metropolitan offer but also its necessary that it maintains its ecological significance, procurring for a strategy of breaking away from the models of agglomeration towards the reality of the formation of a good part of the central area. This category of expectant territories and key areas in the definition of the metropolitan city can also be found in the so called “Valles Corridor” that is experimenting a progressive configuration of a territorial passage of metropolitan flows and the employment of an extense directional sector and activities. The corridor is presented as an articulator of metropolitan exchange of Barcelona with its sub-systems of the Vallés and the catalan interior, especially the urban system of the “ Cubeta del Vallés”. The space of low density residence of , the mixed spaces in contact with the territorial park of Collserola, and the availability of territories with development expectations favor the reinforcing the model of the formentrioned corridor. The progressive loss of the centripetal condition of the metropolitan city, due to the consolidation of the different poles where the life in the metropolis is articulated, opens a fundamental field of the projectual attention: the resolution and optimization of the spaces from where pass all types of movement, generated or requested. Road mobiliy and the distributing areas, do not have to be only physical things anymore- segregated highways- from one origin to one destination, autonomous infrastuctures for the motor vehicles. The canals are multifunctioning spaces that permit a multi-utilization , organizing urban structures of support for the growth and the typologies of diverse urban uses, without originating residual spaces, articulate a compositive order that clarifies the contents of free, public and private space and generated urban spaces highly qualified. They are spaces that from the simplicity and conceptual clarity, overcome the strict resolution of an urban problem of transit or of motorization and affect the form of the city. The substancial elements of this nodal category are: the
structures of flows and the train canals; the links; the new stations and the intermodal transport nods. From a point of view of the organization of the discontinuous metropolitan city, the appareance of nodes in different places of the metropolitan territory will have to permit the configuation of a city model in which no dysfunctionalities are produced with the abandonment of the residentail functions of the centre of Barcelona and the monofunctional specialization of the fabrics, as is the case with the Olympic Village of Barcelona (Villa Olímpica) that substituted the older industrial uses of Poblenou for a basically residential and services area. This time also productive uses should be incorporated in the existing grid to connect with the rest of the existing urban fabric, and evenmore avoid the loss of activity of the city, eventhough it was necessary for its redefinition. Another important aspect to highlight in the reformulation of the expectant/latent areas is the creation of the metropolitan nodes, enclaves singular for their position and for strategically taking advantage of the conditions of accessibility as centres of interchange, of requiping and urban significance of the urban and territorial systems of the central area. The points of change of the traditional functional and morphological patterns of the central metropolitan areas, act as poles of development of well placed services and endowments , in relation with the system of residential and economic cores and extentions. Some of the studied nods that offer expectations to generate processes of requalification of the metropolitan city are: the node of Garraf (CIM, centre of interchange of mercancies, the university and the rowing canal of Castelldefels) ; the node of Maresme: in Tiana-Montgat the possibilities of articulating a metropolitan center in the north ; the node of Montcada, taking advantage of the system of the Besós and Ripoll, for the recalification of the municipalities of Santa Coloma de Gramemet, Montacada and
Reixac. All of these are new conditions that demand a recomposition of the culture of metropolitan fact and demand the conformity of a state of consesus of the proposals that are set as the object of the projects. The territory is every time more transparent because the level of knowledge that the forces and various agents that operate are made evident with the minimum movement. The strategic positions do not pass unpercepted by the urbanistic administrators, and the land owners are in conditions to dispose of a level of clear and direct information with the new intermediates of rationalization of the land, both from the point of view of urbanistic developments as well as from the expectations that it can generate. The metropolitan territory is a territory under pressure and of all it is known the action of the public initiative in those spaces where the reel of determinations of the planing has to pass . The open interest in not polemizing nor confronting the public and private initiatives is also clear enough, given the competitiveness among the system of European cities asks for the sum of initiatives that make use of the synergies. Perhaps, this posture for the construction of a discontinuous metropolis, enriched with the most intentional contributions of the specialists of the regional scale, will shed light in the future of the metropolitn reality and will avoid the lack of collective intelligence that drove in Barcelona, in a path of return to experiences already lived or on co-opted paths, The «necropolis» of Mumford or the «petrified city» of Max Ernst.