This is the Aqüeducte park in Ciutat Meridiana
which arose after the transformation of the old soccer field in the Ciutat Meridiana neighborhood
Now the city has 12,000 m2 more green space to practice different activities
It arose through the Neighborhood Plan of the Zona Nord of Barcelona and in a joint work with the neighborhood
rest areas and sports facilities suitable for people of all ages
it is connected to the Collserola mountain range and a beautiful natural environment
free of physical barriers to walk around without the need to climb steps
It is also the perfect place for children to play and have fun to the fullest
It has three terraces with slides and other activities and play elements
located in open spaces where children can run and run from one terrace to another while they go from game to game
This children’s play area is divided into two zones: one located right next to the basketball court and the other to the northeast where the three terraces are located
eight petanque courts and an area with fitness equipment
The other novelty is that the central part of the park has a track with bleachers where large events can be held or serve as a 7-a-side soccer field
it has an accessible walking circuit through which you can walk through the entire park without having to climb a single step
The circuit and the spaces around all the recreation areas are also living areas for resting
The Aqüeducte park in Ciutat Meridiana had an investment of more than three million euros as part of the development of the Neighborhood Plan
Its inauguration coincided with the beginning of the Ciudad Meridiana neighborhood’s main festival and the premiere of the new ornamental lighting of the aqueduct
the neighborhood’s most iconic construction
The new lighting is intended to simulate the passage of water and highlight the arches. It highlights all the architectural beauty of the construction that dates from the late nineteenth century
in order to supply water to the city of Barcelona from the streams of Ripoll and Caldes
The redevelopment work began in February 2020
despite having been halted due to the pandemic
Stock images by Depositphotos
La venta de la nuda propiedad
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What happens when city authorities get involved
In February 2015, city authorities in São Paulo announced plans to open a network of 12 public FabLabs
Following in the wake of an earlier ‘telecentro’ initiative that opened up internet access and digital media to citizens
the FabLabs are meant to bring the tools of digital fabrication to the people
equipping them for a fuller role in what FabLab founder Neil Gershenfeld forsees as a revolution in the decentralisation and democratisation of production and consumption
A brief history of digital fabrication workshops
community workshops have moved into hardware hacking
using tools that allow their members to modify
and manufacture anything from toys and vehicles to wind turbines and home energy systems (FabLab Barcelona even made a prefab eco-house)
code and instructions online – what gets designed in one workshop can theoretically be made in any other in the world
they would quite like to set up their own fabrication labs independently of MIT
there are around 440 FabLabs across 33 countries
And so to Barcelona, which opened its first FabLab at the Institute of Advanced Architecture Catalunya (IAAC) in 2006. Originally intended for relatively closed use – for students, prototyping, and architectural commissions – the lab garnered global attention for its pioneering vision of urban governance
Vicente Guallart envisioned maker-citizens using new tools such as 3D printers and open source designs as a means of taking an active
adapting ideas produced globally to fit their own local needs
What does a citizen of this exciting new world look like
and willing to embrace digital fabrication tools
yes – but in a relatively trouble-free and depoliticised way
In adopting the term ‘Ateneu’ for their workshops
city authorities have evoked a Catalan tradition of social centres where people used to meet up
and debate issues about the type of society they want - but which in this case civic leaders wish to associate with selectively
in an abandoned silk ribbon factory in the Les Corts district
A further 20 workshops are planned to some degree for later down the line
the Ateneus network director stressed how embryonic and exploratory the programme is
A community workshop for digital fabrication is a strange concept for public administrators to get their heads around
Councils traditionally produce conventional public services for people to receive and consume; conversely
Ateneus offer a space where citizens do the producing
Simply convincing city bureaucracies to experiment with this concept is already an achievement
Whilst setting-up is also relatively straightforward - installing machinery
running courses – the real challenge comes in weaving the workshops into the everyday fabric of the local community
confidence and commitment amongst neighbours
and considerable resources and patience on the part of the city authorities before the possibilities loaded onto Ateneus can be realised
The experiences around the Ateneu in Ciutat Meridiana highlight these tensions
Ciutat Meridiana is the poorest neighbourhood in Barcelona – unemployment exceeds 20 percent
and family incomes are one third of city averages
The neighbourhood association is constantly in battle with the council over changes to social services
and resisting evictions from mortgage lenders
with no immediate role in alleviating the daily crisis of people’s lives
The people of Ciutat Meridiana needed food
and the project didn’t help itself by siting the workshop in a building that neighbours were already using as a food bank
(The Mayor’s support for Ateneus also counted for little in a neighbourhood that felt ambivalently towards him)
locals were alienated and occupied the Ateneu in protest
eventually leading to two conditions of agreement – the food bank was re-established
albeit elsewhere in the neighbourhood; and the Ateneu would emphasise training and work for young people
Ciutat Meridiana shines a light on the tension between what citizens wanted from their city now
and what city-leaders envisage for future citizens
Even if local stakeholders are engaged beforehand
as happened with the first Ateneu in Les Corts
opening up a workshop is the easiest part of the project
Embedding the facility into community life is more challenging by far
and tools for anyone walking in off the streets
The ethos of these spaces borrows heavily from a Silicon Valley-esque
in which people happily share enthusiasm for digital fabrication and explore new forms of collaboration together
Whether citizens suffering precarious employment and other economic hardships wish to embrace this form of citizenship is perhaps a moot point
Despite the public imaginary of hackspaces as user-led spaces
neither the Ateneus nor these other makerspaces are particularly grassroots phenomena
One test for whether the Barcelona civic vision of digital fabrication workshops can co-exist with grassroots activities will come with Can Batlló
a massive disused textile mill proposed as a potential site for an Ateneus workshop
Can Batlló is in the Sants district of Barcelona
and working-class Sants has a long tradition of political and community organisation - including many squats and social centres - and a history of their own autonomist and co-operative activities
In response to the economic crisis, Sants activists have already occupied and renovated Block 11 of Can Batlló
The building has been converted into an autonomous
self-organised community centre and co-operative working space
urban gardening space; and the Sants activists have aspirations to seed local
co-operative economic activity for the neighbourhood through the centre
an activist from the Ciutat Invisible co-operative
the smart city is merely a different brand of the same neo-liberal model of urban regeneration
whose democratic and local economic credentials are deeply suspect
the council’s (sometimes violent) evictions of long-established squatted social centres have deepened suspicions of the smart city plan
and heightened antagonism with the city’s grassroots activists
with city-leaders’ notions of an orderly cultivation of technological citizenship
has unintentionally uncovered very different forms of citizenship in action
Ateneus are trying to establish themselves in a context where people feel the strain of economic crisis
and increasingly question whose interests are truly being served by future visions of their city
Many in the wider ‘maker’ movement can be reluctant to engage in politics overtly, as to do so would appear to constrain the notion of giving tools to people in a way which offers them unconstrained agency around their purposes, deployment and use. Yet, as I have explored in my work on community workshops in London in the 1980s
these types of ‘making’ spaces are always opened in very specific social
Such contexts already influence the relative ease and kinds of support available for putting tools to particular purposes
If communities are truly to be liberated to debate
and resist tools in a way that they see as appropriate (rather than those encapsulated in elite visions)
one must engage with the politics of these contexts
This is something that earlier advocates of providing tools for the people have made very clear – think of William Morris and his argument for socialism
or Murray Bookchin on post-scarcity anarchism
the Ateneus programme could provide important spaces for exploring technology
and urban governance in very practical ways
supporting diverse forms of neighbourhood-led development
The longer-term promise of Ateneus rests with it becoming a community resource owned by the neighbourhoods in which it sits
rather than tied up with the patronage of local politicians
and wherever else public authorities become involved in community workshops
should take note: bringing tools to people requires skilful community development as well as skills in digital fabrication
A controlled opening up of urban governance and experiments in cultivating particular forms of citizenship is not an easy task
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General view of the exit of Barcelona on the Avinguda Meridiana
with the neighbourhood of Vallbona to the right of the bridge
and Ciutat Meridiana and Torre Baró to the left. © Myriam Meloni i Arnau Bach
a photographic project by Myriam Meloni and Arnau Bach
we see the Barcelona behind the ring roads
The Barcelona of the Rec Comtal irrigation canal and the old Ribes road
The Barcelona that every train commuter relates to the image
More than drawing closer to the farthest Barcelona
the photographs welcome us to the city’s first neighbourhoods
Myriam Meloni and Arnau Bach offer a profound contemporary photographic portrait – verging on the ethnographic – of the four border neighbourhoods in the far north of the city: “The primary interest is to photographically portray the limits of Barcelona
and Nou Barris is the district furthest from the centre”
the four neighbourhoods that mark the city limits and lend them a name are Canyelles
if you get sidetracked while walking through the thick forests or up the really steep slopes
which entailed not only photographing the main characters in the great little stories told in Linde
Co-author Myriam Meloni explains the approach she adopted when exploring the neighbourhoods and their people: “First we went to the residents’ associations
because they have the most connection with the social fabric of each neighbourhood
but from there we try not to be bound to be spokespeople for their demands
which would undoubtedly provide us with a more complete and
Esperanza went from living in a shack in the neighbourhood of El Carmel to living in a flat in Canyelles
The longstanding president of the Ciutat Meridiana Residents’ Association
these neighbourhoods have been home to people from very different backgrounds and with fairly low economic means
are the three neighbourhoods with the lowest average family income in the city
Vallbona and Torre Baró do not amass even 5,000 residents
The latter neighbourhood also has a population density of 28,000 people per square kilometre
although far from the population density of the neighbourhood La Florida
which ranks the highest in Europe with more than 74,000 inhabitants per square kilometre
The houses are also different depending on the neighbourhood
In Torre Baró and Vallbona many self-built
In Canyelles and Ciutat Meridiana there is a profusion of warren-type
many of which lack decent living conditions
Past (and present) of neighbourhood struggle
Filiberto Bravo is an institution in Ciutat Meridiana
Longstanding president of its residents’ association
his legacy of neighbourhood struggle is an encyclopaedia open to anyone who talks to him: “Filiberto’s vision of the neighbourhood is one of togetherness and social struggle
but the possible vision of Ciutat Meridiana held by a woman who has recently migrated from a small town in Morocco is a sense of freedom”
having a close-knit community that cares for one another but at the same time does not interfere in each other’s lives is critical for personal development in freedom”
Bellvitge on the northern border of Barcelona
as one of the testimonials presented in Linde notes
it is also class dignity: “When they proposed we come to live in Canyelles
[…] At night I could only think of the flat – Esperanza lived with her family in a shack in El Carmel – of how it was made
but for me it was a palace… And it still is.”
Although denouncing social injustice has helped keep the feeling of attachment alive among its residents after so many generations
lapsing into showing Ciutat Meridiana just as Evictionville
and the x of the equation was already resolved by Candel in Els altres Catalans [The Other Catalans]: “In reality
It is the sad fate of their status as a low proletariat.” In Linde
the exploration of reality of four of Barcelona’s poorest neighbourhoods seeks to express itself through beauty and eschewing drama
it moves away from the constant historicist examinations that are made of the now thirteen “nou barris” [new neighbourhoods]
the realities of the four neighbourhoods portrayed in the book are woven together in a narratively richer whole
“but in Linde it was not our intention to speak of the other objectively
but to afford a glimpse within a much more complex reality”
When a journalist has to cover a story about precariousness
they should always be attuned to the signal that warns of the danger of yielding to the romanticisation of poverty
Stories of precariousness are passed on orally by the person concerned; the journalist listens to them
internalises them and contextualises them (or
they should); then they portray that story
they publish it for the scrutiny and judgment of public opinion
neither with the publication nor with the payment received by the journalist
but continues to be the unique and current reality of that person and their environment
The great balancing act entails telling the story in a manner that is mindful of otherness
and that is only achieved over time and through an honest relationship with the sources
among other things: “The main idea was to decipher and understand the day-to-day life of these neighbourhoods
which end up being the fringes of the fringes when they are not and should not be considered as such
Beyond the economic reality and the historical institutional neglect of these neighbourhoods
there is another factor that explains how the distinctive characteristics of their residents are structured and how the feeling of attachment has been ignited here: all four are recent neighbourhoods
built in many cases by the actual residents who still reside in them
who inherited the homes that their parents built
four walls and a roof were raised at night so that
the wardens couldn’t demolish the construction
It is not the only example of neighbourhoods built home by home by their own residents: Huertas Clavería tells us in his Barrios de Barcelona [Barcelona’s Neighbourhoods] how the residents provided some rudimentary steps to spare the residents the slopes in Torre Baró
Another example: during the hijacking of bus line 47 in May 1978 (which served to demonstrate to the city council that the bus could climb the slopes of these neighbourhoods)
too steep for the Pegaso Monotral steered by the bus driver Manuel Vital
people continue to make small improvements in these neighbourhoods
without asking for permission or pardon: “Here
the feeling of attachment is very different from that of a neighbourhood that was built centuries ago
by people already forgotten and whose history has been lost”
Many were built by their owners in the mid-20th century
Until the Congost bridge was built in 2005
Only a goat path connected it with the adjacent neighbourhoods of Torre Baró and Ciutat Meridiana
someone prepares what is needed and in a couple of days children are already playing soccer
young people will adapt it to rehearse urban music choreographies: “The legislation is the same as in the rest of the city
Nor do they need to direct thousands of tourists each day.” Myriam Meloni rounds off the reflection: “There
every piece of public space has been allocated a use
It ends up being a matter of economic interest
each piece of city has a huge potential for economic revenue; but not here”
The centralist and productive conception of here and there is blurred in these neighbourhoods
Candel was referring to this type of peripheral neighbourhoods with his famous Donde la ciudad cambia su nombre [Where the City Changes Its Name]
and while it is true that the residents (including the photographer who has spent a bit more than a year in these neighbourhoods
as read in the previous paragraph) say “go to Barcelona” when they are already in it (something that also happens in the neighbourhoods that centuries ago were independent towns)
the historical aspiration of the residents of Canyelles
Vallbona and Ciutat Meridiana is to overcome this otherness and be treated just like the rest of Barcelona
Giving new meaning to sometimes monstrous spaces
The relationship with nature is much closer at these latitudes of the city
the last vestiges of the Rec Comtal irrigation canal are still used by young people to go for a dip
and the last vegetable gardens in the city also lie in this area
In Linde we become acquainted with the story of Rosita
a wild boar that roams the area: “When I call her”
“she always comes to me and we spend time together
Blas works the land and has raised animals
the landscape changes in a few hundred metres
From the mountain surroundings we enter the hub of roads (C-17
the city’s quintessential non-place that has been reappropriated by its residents
Ciutat Meridiana and Vallbona they have learned to live next to the mountains
they have still had more to learn to live hemmed-in between piles of concrete
The entry road links to Barcelona to the north have marked the life of these neighbourhoods
separating them from the rest of the city and from each other
motorway entries and exits and columns of implausible diameters to hold it all together ooze through the hovels
the little vegetable gardens and the waste grounds of Barcelona’s northernmost neighbourhoods
The photographs of these landscapes featured in Linde convey that overwhelming sense of insignificance of human measure in the presence of such architectural abominations
Two members of the dance troupe La Virgen del Quincho
named in honour of a very popular virgin in Ecuador
who rehearse every Sunday on wasteland in Ciutat Meridiana
The Ciutat Meridiana sloping lift connects to Torre Baró suburban train station and Ciutat Meridiana's line 11 metro station. © Myriam Meloni i Arnau Bach
Many of the residents who use these non-places to meet up come from realities in which many people had to live in miniscule places
such that all social life took place on the street
many of the flats in Canyelles and Ciutat Meridiana are tiny and are still inhabited by lots of people
so to a certain extent they are not only reproducing customs
but also they are still adapting to the circumstances
“This also occurs in the Raval neighbourhood
Occupation of the public space is a very cultural thing
It is a reappropriation of space without too much press
The residents of these neighbourhoods have given a new meaning to the non-place
meeting up with their families and friends
In short: “The space outside homes is given new meaning
turning it into something to be shared by the community”
Under tons of cement and countless cars that travel in and out and cross the city limits in a frenzy of movement
at ground level and availing of the shade under the bridges
And they are dressed in regional costumes that they have been sewing for weeks
from being there so long and having made the place their own
they have also internalised the constant and piercing noise of rolling tyres and rattling engines
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The new park opens up a large accessible space connected to the Collserola mountain range and the natural surroundings in the area
without any physical barriers and no need to climb steps to go for a stroll
The route around the park includes different areas where people can relax and chat to friends and neighbours
The park includes three terraces with slides and other play elements for children
with an open design meaning children can run while they play
A sports court with a stand will provide a 7-a-side football pitch and can be used to host events in the neighbourhood
the new Parc de l’Aqüeducte includes a basketball court
a gym area with apparatus for elderly people and eight petanque courts
The aqueduct has new lighting which can simulate the flow of water and highlight the arches
The lighting highlights the beauty of the architectural elements
built at the end of the 19th century to supply the city with water from the Ripoll and Caldes riverbeds
The remodelling project to turn the former football pitch in Ciutat Meridiana into the new park was part of the Zona Nord Neighbourhood Plan and was developed with local residents
Urban Planning and Mobility Area is responsible for providing municipal services linked to the public areas and city services which make life easier for people who live and work in the city.
The City Council seeks to ensure a quality public space
a green and biodiverse city that is productive and resilient
a city committed to active and sustainable mobility with public involvement and commitment
Urban Planning and Mobility Area has different instruments as well as advisory and participatory bodies for effective involvement and collaboration in municipal projects with the general public
The Council sees to the smooth running of the city services
to ensure the daily wellbeing of the public and contribute towards the city's development
Local people in the neighbourhood of Ciutat Meridiana can now stroll
play and do sport in the new Parc de l’Aqüeducte
The former neighbourhood football pitch has been transformed to create 12,260 square metres of greenery
children’s play areas and sports facilities for people of all ages
The remodelling project was part of the Neighbourhood Plan and was developed with input from local residents