Protection of Collserola – Claudio Cattaneo (R&D)

Friday 10th July, Can Masdéu (Barcelona)

 

Collserola is a mountain range in the middle of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area that has been greatly urbanized and, a fraction of it is, since a few years only, protected as a natural park. The fight for its declaration as such and not as an “Urban Park” has been long and yet a lot has to be done in order to protect from urbanization those fringe areas that have not been included in the park.
The talk will explore the main interventions-that alsoinvolve real-estate speculation and privatization-that are threatening Collserola (or have done so), and the civil and uncivil actions that in the past two decades have been prompted by social movements. By doing this, it focuses on the discourses and the values that different actors with interest in Collserola have manifested, and explores on the complex co-existence of a natural park surrounded by a large metropolis. 

Background reading material: Cattaneo, Claudio and Marc Gavaldà. 2010. The experience of rurban squats in Collserola, Barcelona: what kind of degrowth? Journal of Cleaner Production 18: 581-589.