Resilience and Urban Regeneration Policies. Lessons from Community-Led Initiatives. The Case Study of CanFugarolas in Mataro (Barcelona)

This paper addresses socio-ecological, community-led resilience as the ability of the urban system to progress and adapt. This is based on the socio-cultural, self-organized case study of CanFugarolas in Mataro (Barcelona), for the recovery of a derelict industrial building and given the lack of attention to resilience emerging from grassroots. Facing rigidities (stagnation) observed under the provisions of urban regeneration policies (regulatory realm), evidenced in the proliferation of urban voids (infrastructural arena), the social subsystem stands as the enabler of urban progression. Under the heuristics of the Adaptive Cycle and Panarchy, the study embraces Fath's model to analyze the transition along, and the interactions between, the adaptive cycles at each urban subsystem. The mixed method approach reveals the ability of the community to navigate all stages and overcome successive ailments, despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles (traps) at the physical support (built stock) and the regulatory arena (urban planning). Further, cross-scale, social-centered interactions (panarchy) are also traced, becoming the sink and the trigger of the urban dynamics. The community, in the form of an actor-network, becomes the catalyst (through Remember/Revolt) of urban resilience at the city scale. At a managerial level, this evidences its temporal and spatial complementarity to top-down urban regeneration policies.

Automated summary

This research examines social-ecological and community-led urban resilience, with a focus on CanFugarolas in Mataro, Barcelona. It highlights the role of the social subsystem in driving urban progression and resilience, navigating obstacles and serving as a catalyst at the city scale. Through the case study, it demonstrates the complementary relationship between bottom-up community initiatives and top-down urban regeneration policies.