Urban planning and a Europe transformed: The landscape politics of scale in Valencia

Abstract

This paper explores how urban planning in a European, regional capital—Valencia—is shaped by economic globalization and political restructuring. Employing the vocabulary and concepts of the emerging literature on scale, this paper examines how planning efforts—like Valencia’s massive new redevelopment project, the City of the Arts and Sciences—are driven by the wider “re-scaling” or “re-territorialization” of the European political economy. This is a case study that moves beyond abstract theorizations about scale to the complex details of planning strategy in a regional context. More, it argues that an analytical shift from abstract theory to the empirical detail of a European city reveals two basic points. First, the re-scaling of Europe is more contested locally than this literature would suggest, negotiated politically as planners attempt to “re-scale” urban spaces. Second, the planned re-scaling of the city is about more than just space, but is also about the cultural landscape. Planned efforts to transform cities like Valencia in the image of global capitalism or European integration must navigate these complex, cultural politics. Theories of European re-scaling must account for the cultural politics in which planning is embedded, since planners must surely do so.