Cultural Policies, urban transformations and social sanitation in contemporary Barcelona

During these last three decades, culture has played a fundamental role in great urban transformations. However, they have involved some changes in social and cultural field not only in downtown Western cities, but also their suburbs. This papers will try to show how cultural strategies for urban renewal processes carried out by Barcelona's local City Hall has meant, in last term, social homogenization strategies. This paper will end by showing how recent convergence between conservative and liberal sectors of ruling classes of Catalan capital about which cultural strategies must be applied for urban renewal processes could mean the consolidation of new topographies of power in contemporary metropolitan Barcelona.