"We are the forerunners in Southern Europe": Experimenting with Business Improvement Districts in Greater Barcelona

Abstract

This paper uses the experimentation with Business Improvement Districts in Greater Barcelona to examine its relational re-making in a rather over-looked Southern-Mediterranean urban, socio-spatial and political-institutional context. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and institutional archives, it offers three intellectual contributions to urban policy mobilities studies. First, the paper argues that the territorial adaptation, mediation and translation of urban entrepreneurial policies hinges upon the differential and inherited nature of welfare regimes, state-market constellations and existing political infrastructures. Second, the paper outlines that policymakers have followed open-ended and multilateral learning approaches through space and time, in which some policy features were (re-)learned, circulated and modified to fit more centralized regimes. Third, and finally, it sketches out the role of government-funded pilot programs as instances through which policies are showcased, experimented and ultimately constituted before and after their institutionalization in specific socio-legal and socio-spatial contexts.