Paper short abstract:

This paper talks about how the residents and the municipal authorities of the city of Barcelona refer the city's structure of governance as the "municipality machine", and the effect of this metaphor on attributing urban responsibility and blame.

Paper long abstract:

Escola Benjami is an unused former school building in Trinitat Nova, one of the most disadvantaged and marginalized neighborhoods of Barcelona situated on its north-eastern periphery. Taking the battles and negotiations over the future of this public space in municipal channels of local deliberation, participation, and decision-making (neighborhood councils, district audiences, participatory urban improvement plans etc.) as ethnographic points of departure, this paper outlines how a complex web of formal and collusive relationships among multiple actors, administrations and jurisdictions involved in the City of Barcelona's politics and practices of urbanism creates a structure of governance that both the city authorities and the residents alike refer as the "Municipality Machine." It then discusses the concrete effects of this metaphor, namely a machine claimed to be fully understood and controlled by no one that is fueled by a moral framework of citizen participation. I show that it functions as a naturalized myth (Barthes 1972) to smooth the contradictions between the ethical urbanism narratives and the neoliberal urbanism practices of the Barcelona city government, immunizing multiple authorities against ethical urban responsibility, justifying social marginalization and inequalities, and leading to a situation in which no one is ever responsible but residents are always to be blamed.