Projects for the new found city: energies, tensions, differences and needs

Exploring how the existing architectural heritage compares against the great contemporary urban transformations by evaluating its implications generates several considerations particularly on how the city has interpreted its cultural value. Every infrastructural intervention defines new spaces and urban opportunities for integration between districts that are distant in terms of urban, social and economic condition, such as, for instance, Medellín where, during the past twenty years, renovation works have enhanced the role of architecture by proposing new common spaces to overcome social disparity. The analysis of Barcelona’s urban transformation case/model (a landmark also for the Colombian city) that since the late 1980s has redesigned extensive sectors of the city based on a new image, generates considerations on how the extensively stratified historical fabric has interacted with the change by strongly manifesting its identity. The Barceloneta district, an 18th century town and the recent site of extensive renovation works, is an iconic case in this regard. Retracing the process implemented in Barcelona offers the opportunity to monitor, after the transformation, even the new housing policies studied to improve the conditions of citizens, to strengthen the city’s activities centred on tourism and, subsequently, to evaluate the need to implement a new recovery process of the architectural heritage.