Ethnography of the Urban Project. The Production of the Olympic Village of Barcelona

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the production of the Olympic Village considered as the emblematic work of the Barcelona Model established as a result of the preparation of the city as the venue for the 1992 Olympic Games. For this, the division of space proposed by Lefebvre is taken as a theoretical framework and an ethnography of the urban project as a methodological approach aimed at analyzing the mediation between the built environment and the behavior of human groups in public space. By analyzing the factors and actors that intervened in the conception of spatial reform and its interrelation with the practical and symbolic value that the inhabitants print from the lived and perceived space, it has been possible to account for the disparities between the ways of living and the utopian vision of architects. The Olympic Village was conceived by the architects as a new neighborhood that would happen automatically when the project becomes inhabited. This projective prediction has been denied by the spatial practices and appropriations observed in the streets and parks of the Olympic Village, since they represent the antithesis of a neighborhood, while constituting the social life of a residential complex turned into the refuge of a class privileged determined to deny public space as a place for socialization.