Walking, feeling, breathing in, and getting lost in the streets are the best ways to get to know a city. When moving through a city in this way, we can see social imbalances, segregated spaces and neighborhoods, and changes in the landscape. Beneath what lies in plain sight lie mechanisms and regulatory apparatus. These include norms and socio-institutional structures that operate at different scales, from the local to the supranational. As we describe in this chapter, these influence urban dynamics beyond what our senses perceive directly. While we must take into account relationships between social agents, we must not overlook interactions between the agency itself and broader local, national, and international structures.Processes of capitalist globalization, until 1970, unfolded mainly within the framework of nationally organized state territorialities. More recently, these dynamics have changed and increased the importance of sub-national and supranational forms of territorial organization. This in turn has produced a process of rescaling and reterritorialization of capital and power. This is clearly reflected in the transfer of economic-policy authority and jurisdiction from states to the scales mentioned above. In this chapter, we show that both state territoriality and national governance are being redefined and deemphasized toward both wider and narrower scales. This makes up part of a neoliberal strategy to confront crises and be able to regulate capital accumulation more directly.We read the new role of local agency, as already signaled, on the basis of this diagnosis, and in a context of neoliberal rescaling. We recognize the value of forms of collective action, as well as that of the actors who, with a will toward transformation, have managed to reinvent their activity and delve into different forms of urban democratization.
A finales de la década de 1960, y durante los siguientes veinte años, se produjo en muchas grandes ciudades europeas un proceso de desindustrialización que cambió el rumbo de dichas ciudades por completo. Tras el declive económico, algunas de estas ciudades supieron hacer retornar el capital para volver a los ciclos de acumulación. Así pues, pretendemos entender dicho proceso de desindustrialización en el marco de las lógicas del desarrollo desigual y sus consecuencias posteriores sobre el espacio. Trataremos de comprender cómo el ‘neoliberalismo realmente existente’ actúa bajo los parámetros de creación y destrucción haciendo del espacio urbano un elemento productivo. El objetivo es analizar cómo los flujos de capital fijan su productividad espaciotemporal para hacer resurgir y rehabilitar las ciudades postindustriales europeas recolocándolas en el sistema de mercado mundial. Por otra parte, identificamos la cristalización del desarrollo espacial desigual (DED) en diferentes dimensiones socioespaciales con el fin de entender la complejidad práctica mediante la cual se estructura el propio DED.
The phenomenon of deindustrialization, as well as the vertiginous changes dependent on financial capital, produced new trends in the models of organization and production of western cities such as Bilbao. The socio-spatial organization and structuring of the ‘new city’ begins to be a topic of great importance. It is in this sense that the concepts of public and urban space take on greater theoretical relevance. The results obtained through the application of the theory in the case of Bilbao, follow global urban development tendencies. Spatial planning fulfils the strategic functions of a system that dominates urban processes at their convenience. There is a tendency to build aseptic spaces that are closer to the interests of capital than of citizens.
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