%0 Conference Paper %B Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series: Reconceptualising Urban Landscapes of Work. 20-21 April %D 2017 %T Urban transitions: Replacing traditional work practices in traditional workspaces %A Montserrat Pallares-Barbera %A Esteve Dot Jutgla %X

Moving towards a new paradigm of work-practices brought up by new communication and information technologies embedded in the production system, particular places in the city have experienced interesting new functions; old fashioned traditional industry buildings are fractioned in medium to tiny spaces used by very small one to two-person firms in a multiple sector start-ups of collaborative economy. But the most interesting element in this process is that firms are out of the market in the classical sense; they belong from the social economy. Firms mostly started coming out from urban social groups fighting to gain managing power over spaces in the city, asking to get social public services by saving industrial heritage and getting mutual collaboration, a bottom-up local adaptation of former working spaces to a more social and collaborative functions. This is the case of Can Batlló in the neighborhood of Sants in Barcelona the process started by social movements to prevent the old huge factory premises to be turned down and to follow a process of private housing development. Eight hectares of central city land in a working class neighborhood with industrial heritage premises have been in struggle for twenty years and finally the agreement has been set in a cooperative form managing the premises, the social activities program and the space devoted to economic activities. The purpose of this paper is to study both the taking over traditional industry spaces and reconceptualizing them into new work places by economic activities which their primary focus are not the pure economic profit.

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26119.19368

%B Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series: Reconceptualising Urban Landscapes of Work. 20-21 April %C University of Portsmouth %G eng