Overview

The Politics of Late Urban Entrepreneurialism provides a critical examination of how innovation district transformation in Barcelona has led to periodic crisis and an overproduction of commercial real estate alongside a chronic housing shortage, gentrification, touristification, and a growth in low‑quality employment, among other damaging results. Today, innovation districts are widely seen as a disruptive but generative solution to post‑industrial decline and inefficient land use in urban centres and as an effective means of bringing inclusive economic dynamism, quality jobs, and improved public spaces to city neighbourhoods. Their advocates often point to the pioneering transformation of the 22@ District. This book challenges the celebratory discourse surrounding the Barcelona case, and with a critical eye on how innovation district transformation is conditioned by the prevailing global political‑economic context. It also chronicles how this transformation has continually ignited forms of class‑based struggle in Barcelona by embattled residents angered at how their own neighbourhood has been used as an urban laboratory and site for speculative forms of capital accumulation. Ultimately, this book challenges the notion that ‘innovation’ is always a beneficent force through a critical examination of the disruptive consequences of innovation district transformation, by engaging with existing literature and interrogating the dominant narratives that celebrate them as being universally beneficial. Instead, it underscores the tensions and contradictions inherent in them. With its focus on the historical development of global capitalism and the retention of a narrow repertoire of entrepreneurial approaches towards urban governance, The Politics of Late Urban Entrepreneurialism will be of great interest to scholars and students researching globalisation and urbanisation.

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9781032766621

Table of Contents

Reviews

‘A much-needed, brilliant historic and economic analysis of the first innovation district in the world: the 22@ District in post-industrial Poblenou, Barcelona. Not one space, but multiple interventions and embodiments of disruptive urbanisation enabled by a public-private growth machine which, under visions for spatial transformation and innovation, ended up eroding the cultural and social fabric its investors, businesses, and new residents came looking for.’ Professor Isabelle Anguelovski, ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona and Director of the Barcelona Laboratory for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability, Spain ‘A detailed explanation of how Barcelona's 22@ District is an example of a hyperactive hub that embodies the sources of capitalist predation in cities.’ Professor Manuel Delgado, Chair of Religious and Urban Anthropology at the University of Barcelona, Spain ‘Three renowned critical scholars come together here, in brilliant and pugnacious style, to analyse the political economy of urban “innovation districts” and expose the profit motives behind strategies that are usually pitched as being in the public interest. With its sparklingly clear dissection of boosterist urban rhetoric, and its compelling and necessary class analysis of urban entrepreneurialism, this book is innovation of a different kind: in politically committed social science. It is quite simply a must-read for any serious student of urban affairs.’ Professor Tom Slater, Director of the PhD Program in Urban Planning at Columbia University, USA ‘The Urbanisation of Disruption meticulously tracks the (d)evolution of the 22@ innovation district in Barcelona as a case of late urban entrepreneurialism, a mode of governance driven more by speculative real estate development than by a coherently “disruptivist” industrial or technological strategy. Though originally intended to foster knowledge-based economies, the project ultimately became a commercial real estate marketing scheme. The authors show how the innovation district follows established patterns of growth machine politics that enclose space and seek to attract global corporations and tourists, in the process reinforcing preexisting socio-economic inequalities and generating resistance. The project’s undoing was both a function of the Global Financial Crisis as well as the broader contradictions of post-2008 political economy, in particular how the Spanish state’s austerity policies debilitated local planning processes while igniting a new brand of space-based class politics.’ Professor Rachel Weber, Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, USA

‘A much-needed, brilliant historic and economic analysis of the first innovation district in the world: the 22@ District in post-industrial Poblenou, Barcelona.’ Professor Isabelle Anguelovski, ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona and Director of the Barcelona Laboratory for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability, Spain ‘With its sparklingly clear dissection of boosterist urban rhetoric, and its compelling and necessary class analysis of urban entrepreneurialism, this book is innovation of a different kind: in politically committed social science. It is quite simply a must-read for any serious student of urban affairs.’ Professor Tom Slater, Director of the PhD Program in Urban Planning at Columbia University, USA ‘The Urbanisation of Disruption meticulously tracks the (d)evolution of the 22@ innovation district in Barcelona as a case of late urban entrepreneurialism, a mode of governance driven more by speculative real estate development than by a coherently “disruptivist” industrial or technological strategy.’ Professor Rachel Weber, Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, USA

‘A much-needed, brilliant historic and economic analysis of the first innovation district in the world: the 22@ District in post-industrial Poblenou, Barcelona.’ Professor Isabelle Anguelovski, ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona and Director of the Barcelona Laboratory for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability, Spain ‘With its sparklingly clear dissection of boosterist urban rhetoric, and its compelling and necessary class analysis of urban entrepreneurialism, this book is innovation of a different kind: in politically committed social science. It is quite simply a must-read for any serious student of urban affairs.’ Professor Tom Slater, Director of the PhD Program in Urban Planning at Columbia University, USA ‘The Politics of Late Urban Entrepreneurialism meticulously tracks the (d)evolution of the 22@ innovation district in Barcelona as a case of late urban entrepreneurialism, a mode of governance driven more by speculative real estate development than by a coherently “disruptivist” industrial or technological strategy.’ Professor Rachel Weber, Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, USA

Author Information

Greig Charnock is Professor of Global Political Economy at The University of Manchester, UK. Jose Mansilla is Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Ramon Ribera‑Fumaz is Professor of Urban and Economic Geography at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain.

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