22@: 10 years of economic transformation

Abstract

In 2000, Barcelona City Council created a municipal company, 22@ Barcelona, to promote and manage a project whose aim was to transform obsolete industrial zones of Poblenou into an area with high urban and environmental quality, where new knowledge and innovationrelated activities could be carried out. The project was based on a model of a compact Mediterranean city with neighbourhoods in which to live, study and work at the same time. To achieve this, the former land use designation of 22a, which established that these city centre areas should only be used for industry, had to be changed to the new status of 22@, which permits the coexistence of all production activities that do not cause a nuisance or pollution, normalizes the presence of dwellings that have been affected since 1953, and favours their restoration.