Cities Beyond Crisis - by Catalina Iannone

About the Book

A critical spatial perspective on the narratives that shaped two neighborhoods in Spain and Portugal after the 2008 financial crisis

Book Synopsis

This book is freely available in an open-access edition thanks to the generous support of The Ohio State University Libraries.

In Cities Beyond Crisis, Catalina Iannone studies the rapid evolution of Iberian urban centers in the years following the 2008 financial crisis, identifying how this event catalyzed a protracted period of unraveling and reorganization in the region. Arguing that the affects and effects of the crisis are best understood when embedded within local environments, Cities Beyond Crisis focuses on how textual, visual, and spatial interventions both drove and contested change in two racially diverse, historically marginalized neighborhoods in the capital cities of Spain and Portugal--Madrid's Lavapiés and Lisbon's Mouraria. Through a critical examination of the narratives shaping public perception of these spaces, whether promoting their development and consumption or challenging market-oriented trends, Iannone demonstrates how the stories that stakeholders across the ideological spectrum told about these districts illuminate enduring attachments and aspirations in each nation's relationship to race. By approaching the study of space as a contested and contingent social product, this book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from both humanistic and social science theories and practices to show how cultural production shapes and is shaped by the built environment.

Review Quotes

"Who has the right to the city? Iannone's exemplary contribution to cultural studies sharply illuminates the global processes and local practices that shape Lisbon's Mouraria and Madrid's Lavapiés neighborhoods--revealing the urban as a struggle between control, commodification, contestation, resistance, and resilience."
--Benjamin Fraser, author of Obsession, Aesthetics, and the Iberian City: The Partial Madness of Modern Urban Culture

"An innovative, interdisciplinary contribution to scholarship on the relationships between cities, culture, and capital as they play out in iconic neighborhoods in Lisbon and Madrid after the fiscal crisis of 2008. Fundamental reading for those interested in urban transformation on the Iberian Peninsula."
--Malcolm A. Compitello, Founding and Executive Editor Emeritus of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

"This book makes an important contribution to the fields of urban and cultural studies and cultural geography as practiced within Luso-Hispanic studies by adding the crucial but often overlooked issues of race and ethnicity to ongoing debates about the role of culture in the production of social spaces in Spain and Portugal."
--Susan Larson, editor of Comfort and Domestic Space in Modern Spain

"This innovative study of two neighborhoods makes a significant contribution to the field of urban cultural studies. Starting with an analysis of branding and development in Spain and Portugal in the years following the 2008 financial crisis, Iannone then develops a stimulating account of cultural interventions that sought to contest or provide alternatives to the boom of capital-oriented urban development."
--Ellen W. Sapega, author of Consensus and Debate in Salazar's Portugal

About the Author

Catalina Iannone is an assistant professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Ohio State University.