Project

This project is a subproject of the coordinated project "Urban society in Spain, 1900-2000. Urban expansion and social transformation (sociedadurbana)" developed with the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Granada. Our subproject focuses on the training of working-class peripheries and, within the framework of the general objectives stated in the shared project, will develop some specific objectives, which are essentially related to transformations in the urban, neighbourhood, domestic and everyday spheres.

Based on the methodological experience of the research project on the Barcelona peripheral district of Nou Barris (HAR2017-82965-R), the study area will be one of the two major development axes of the Barcelona metropolitan area, the Besós axis, with the working-class municipalities of Sant Adrià del Besós, Santa Coloma de Gramenet and Montcada i Reixac, and the 10th district of Barcelona (Sant Andreu), to analyse the consequences of migratory processes on the modernisation and urbanisation of the territory, the transformation of the built environment, the neighbourhood, housing and life, as well as the new processes of socialisation and political mobilisation. The different times and forms of construction of these peripheries will be analysed.

Mainly the formation of new residential estates, the processes of self-construction and the densification of pre-existing fabrics. Processes that cannot be separated from the study of the formation of the technical networks and service facilities of these neighbourhoods, critical in the evolution of these peripheries due to their delays, their shortcomings and the tensions they generate. Also fundamental is the great concentration of infrastructures serving the city that brutally affect the entire axis of Besós, leaving a problematic legacy of fragmentation and marginalization in many of these neighbourhoods. It is about relating the processes of physical, social and cultural transformation of these neighbourhoods. With this intention, to the primary sources already used in previous projects will be added the intensive work based on interviews with testimonies, and the analysis of the registers of inhabitants from the years 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960 and 1970 and 1978, which will be angular and complementary sources in the analysis of the processes of migration, urbanization, social and residential mobility. As well as the expansion and consolidation of the new working classes and the progressive creation of a new neighbourhood. To this end, the study of marriages and the changing role of women in the transformation of neighbourhoods is essential. Another aspect that has been revealed to be crucial is the impact of the forms of housing tenure, and the strong impact of horizontal property in the popular peripheries, a unique feature of large Spanish cities.

Some of the legacies that continue to weigh on us today will also be explored, such as the low rates of social rental housing and the process of financialisation of housing, which lays its foundations in this period. The subproject is therefore presented as an interdisciplinary historical approach - between architecture, urban planning, urban geography, analysing the transformations of the urban, social and domestic frameworks - that allows us to show the scope of the problem of habitat in a consolidated metropolitan context.