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Open-ended urbanisms: Space-making processes in the protest encampment of the Indignados movement in Barcelona

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Abstract

This article studies the spontaneous and organic processes involved in the physical planning of protest encampments. Drawing from ethnographic work in the context of the Indignados Movement in Barcelona, it analyzes the spatial evolution and transformation of the Plaza Catalunya encampment in 2011. The encampments evolved in parallel to the conversations and questions that originated them online and off-line. Thus, it particularly examines the notions of open planning (that is, open-source and open-ended decision-making processes) and urban laboratories that the fieldwork indicates were tested in the space of the encampment. The objective is to understand how urban space can be planned through non-hierarchical space-making processes and without a homogeneous overarching structure. This article situates in a larger discussion about alternative space-making processes such as insurgent, tactical planning, as well as in the recent conversations about open-source cities.

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Notes

  1. The name and inspiration of the Indignados was adopted from Hessel’s (2010) book Indignez vous! which was influential to the 2011 social movements of Southern Europe. In the Spanish-speaking world protesters involved in the 15 M Movement started being called Indignados. Later, the word became a synonym of the struggles of 2011 at large.

  2. The Indignados’ agora – as well as the encampment in general – was belligerently feminist and internationalist, and sought to include as many voices as possible, unlike its Athenian predecessor, which excluded women, foreigners and slaves from the debates in the agora.

  3. In an article recently published at The Guardian it is mentioned that indeed about half of the world food is wasted every year, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/10/half-world-food-waste

  4. In the first week of the encampment, it was estimated that a crowd of 2000 thousand people was continuously at Plaza Catalunya (Vanguardia, 2011, http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20110518/54156645645/la-acampada-de-barcelona-gana-adeptos.html). However this figure fluctuated a lot, and some state that at some point the Plaza and its surroundings hosted around 50 000 people.

  5. This is a reference to the so-called Ordinances of Civism of Barcelona – city government’s laws to foster ‘good citizen values’ (in Catalan: civisme) through the regulation of ‘informal’ uses of public space, such as graffiti, public urination, public nudity, drug and alcohol use, vandalism, prostitution, street-vending, among others. These laws are largely unpopular in Barcelona and have generated mass mobilizations and demonstrations since they were promulgated in 2005.

  6. For more on improvisation as a potential urban design tool see Inam (2010). Navigating Ambiguity: Comedy Improvisation as a Tool for Urban Design Pedagogy and Practice. Journal for Education in the Built Environment, 5, 1, 7–26.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by The Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas (UAT), Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), The Clarence S. Stein Institute for Urban and Landscape Studies, The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies (through the Tinker and International Research Travel Grants) and Cornell University’s Department of City and Regional Planning. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders. The author thanks John Forester for comments that greatly improved the manuscript. Special thanks to the participants of the Indignados Movement in Barcelona.

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  1. Department of Geography, Planning and The Environment, Concordia University, 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Henry Hall Building 1255.27, Montreal, H3G 1M8, Quebec, Canada

    Silvano De la Llata

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De la Llata, S. Open-ended urbanisms: Space-making processes in the protest encampment of the Indignados movement in Barcelona. Urban Des Int 21, 113–130 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/udi.2015.17

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