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Barcelona: a victim of its own success?

Developing personas to improve understanding of users’ needs in digital mobility: An experience of the DIGNITY project in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area

This paper contributes to the understanding of the end users’ needs and capabilities in digital mobility by presenting a set of personas developed using data from a population-representative survey conducted among 601 Barcelona Metropolitan Area (BMA) residents. The questionnaires were carried out within the framework of the DIGNITY project. The results show that large parts of the population cannot access digital technologies or lack the skills required to use them effectively. As a result, they are not able to take advantage of many digital mobility solutions. The personas in this paper thus present important information on the diversity of potential users, in a way that designers and other stakeholders can find inspiring. This can help them to create inclusive mobility ecosystem, that fit the users’ needs better, resulting in more people being able to use the solutions

Reviewing the effects of World Expos: Pulsar events for the eventful city?

Expos, festivals and events have become increasingly important as tools of urban developmentin recent decades. The competitive drive to put cities on the global map has led many to adoptevent-based strategies, including the creation of ‘eventful cities’, ‘festival cities’ and ‘eventportfolios’. World Expos have taken on a particular significance as ‘pulsar events’ that canshape the host city through urban development, increased tourism and place branding. Eachhost city also uses the event in a different way, and gives it a unique flavour that tempers theeventual effects. This paper reviews the literature on World Expos and their effects, identifyingthemes including Place branding, Tourism flows, Resident attitudes and Architecture and urbandevelopment. It then analyses the experience of Barcelona, twofold Expo host and a‘paradigmatic’ example of a city developed through mega events.

Events in the network society : the role of pulsar and iterative events

This conceptual article argues for a broader view of the role of events in social systems. When analyzed as social phenomena, events can be seen as social actors that have the potential to both sustain and transform social systems. The maintenance of social systems is often reliant on iterative events, regularly occurring celebrations that tend to confirm social structures. In contrast, pulsar events have the potential to transform social structures. In this sense events can be seen as actors that have important influences on social systems, particularly in linking localized small world networks with the global space of flows. These ideas are explored through the case of Barcelona, which illustrates the interplay between these different types of events in their total portfolio, and how the extension of ritual in the sense of Collins can also contribute to the generation of new relationships and practices in the contemporary network society. Barcelona is examined as an eventful city in which the alternation of continuity through iterative events and change through pulsar events contributes to increasing the network effects of events.

E-Governance in European and South African Cities

Since the late 1990s, city councils have become increasingly aware of the potential for information technologies (ICTs) to improve the management of cities and as an instrument for economic and social policy. This has resulted in a wave of urban ICT strategies and policies, such as the adoption of ICTs within the city administration itself, projects that facilitate access to ICTs by weaker social groups and policies to improve the urban electronic infrastructure. By comparing eight cities - Barcelona, Cape Town, Eindhoven, Johnnesburg, Manchester, Tampere, the Hague and Venice - this book examines a range of innovative urban e-governance strategies and develops a framework of analysis that permits a common approach. Throughout the book, a distinction is made between access policies (aimed at improving access to ICTs for all citizens), content policies (directed to improve the use of ICTs in the city administration and semi-public domains) and infrastructure policies (to improve the provision of broadband infrastructure). For each of the cities, e-strategies and policies are critically reviewed and compared. The book reveals that urban e-strategies have evolved from an internal and technology-centred orientation to a more outward-looking approach.

CURE+ Baseline study: City of Barcelona, Spain