Barcelona has turned into a fallacious scenery, a bussiness oriented city that hides the peopleʼs real life, made of cheap stone houses, flesh and bones. On the one hand we find the visible city, branded, thematized, fitted exclusively for wealthy visitors and worldwide investors on the pursuit of business benefits. On the other hand, we come upon the submerged city of the unseen, a secondhand city, downgraded according the advertising and business affairs. This comunication aims to aproach a two sided process: First, the oblivion and destruction of this neighborhoods and the popular way of life. Second, the community response to the capitalismʼs threats as the Can Batlló example.
Can Batlló, was a former textile factory in La Bordeta neighborhood and, in the last 35 years, has been turned into small workshops. Currently suffers an expropriation process. The neighborhoodʼs joint resistence, and the present economic situation, has allowed to challenge the usual drift of this kind of process and has brought on new opportunities to display another way of town building. The neighbors joint action has allowed the conquest of a self-managed infrastructure, the BlocOnze. All this illustrates that a different method of building a city is possible due to community empowerment. And may be the beginning of a new cooperative urbanism planning based in the needs of dwellers and users.
Crisis regimes and emerging social movements 