Genoa and Barcelona. Urban transformation and participation

Abstract

In 1992 the cities of Barcelona and Genoa both began their recent transformation journey, the former with the Olympics and the latter with the Colombians. While the former capitalised on its transformations, beginning an extensive path of both public and private investments, the latter focused on processes related to major events, happenings or funding (G8, Genoa Capital of Culture, Morandi Viaduct collapse, the national resilience and recovery plan (NRRP), etc.). It is interesting to note that, to date, in both cities, citizen participation or activation largely depends on how much the city seeks consensus on transformation operations more than on design choices by adopting a top-down approach, which is similarly configured in all large and medium-sized European cities. They hardly give space or importance to bottom-up processes except when synergistic to an already planned strategy.