Public Everyday Space

“This welcome addition to the study of post-1992 Barcelona draws our attention to the life-building potential of spatial tactics, grassroots activism and acts of neighborhood citizenship to oppose and escape the logics of the neoliberal city. Drawing from the Deleuze-inspired concept of rhizomatic dissensus, Public Everyday Space: Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Barcelona shows the political importance and liberating promise in fragile, mobile and temporary forms of urban resistance. The solidarity and survival techniques of migrants, the poor and caring citizens give us in this way a glimpse of another possible city, one governed beyond financial and brand-making principles. Saltzman’s rich approach brings together the insights of ethnography, sociology, philosophy and geography, but also those of film and literary studies to her analyses. In so doing, this terrific new book continues to demonstrate the added value that urban cultural studies bring to the study of cities, in a Hispanic context and beyond.” – Mari-Paz Balibrea, Reader in Spanish Cultural Studies, Birbeck, University of London, UK This book explores how everyday practices in public space (sitting, playing, walking, etc.) challenge the increase of top-down control in the global city. Public Everyday Space focuses on post-Olympic Barcelona—a time of unprecedented levels of gentrification, branding, mass tourism, and immigration. Drawing from examples observed in public spaces (streets, plazas, sidewalks, and empty lots), as well as in cultural representation (film, photography, literature), this book exposes the quiet agency of those excluded from urban decision-making but who nonetheless find ways to carve out spatial autonomy for themselves. Absent from the map or postcard, the quicksilver spatial phenomena documented in this book can make us rethink our definitions of culture, politics, inclusion, legality, architecture, urban planning, and public space. Megan Saltzman, PhD, teaches in the Department of Spanish, Latina/o/x and Latin American and Studies at Mount Holyoke College, USA and in the Five College Consortium of Massachusetts Architectural Studies Program.