The Creative and Cultural City as Space for Exclusion and Segregation. Analyzing La Placica Vintage from Zaragoza: Materiality, Practices, Narratives and Virtualities

Abstract

The creative and cultural city emerges as a paradigm of economic and socio-territorial management in contemporary cities. Zaragoza is no stranger to this issue, carrying out urban regeneration projects through structural urban actions (Plan Especial de Reforma Interior [peri]/Special Plan for Internal Reform) and the production of ephemeral activities in specific areas of the city (La Placica Vintage). This case study explores how a determined space of the city is composed in an articulate mannerÍ€”and in which both types of actions converge through four main axes: Materiality, performative practices, narratives and discourses, and virtuality. For this, we use the ethnographic possibilities that the place-assemblage allows in the analysis of emerging and ephemeral spaces, problematizing the workplace itself and multiplying this analysis. We then highlight the processes of segregation and social exclusion that occur in the studied area, thus contributing to the public debate on gentrification processes that occur in our cities.