The draft “social cohesion through urban transformation” focuses on the transformation of the La Mina Neighbourhood in Barcelona, which is dominated by post-war panel-housing buildings. Through the predominant settlement of immigrants here and the social and spatial disconnection to the surroundings, the neighbourhood developed quickly into a vertical slum with persistent social deficits and disadvantages.
The user-friendly transformation progress aims to take the neighbourhood’s residents into consideration. To provide a sustainable transformation, demolition is avoided as much as possible. With new openings and extensions, the residents should be provided with more possibilities to express themselves from the outside.
Residents should not have to move out of the neighbourhood for the transformation. Newly located dwellings or transformed dwellings will house them during the transformation.
The neighbourhood is transformed into a walkthrough neighbourhood connecting the surrounding residential neighbourhoods Ribera and La Catalana. This aims to change the image of La Mina as a closed and anonymous one into a more open and diverse one. Also, the panel-housing buildings which served as walls are broken through with new and wider openings, enabling people to pass through.
The draft combines different transformation strategies into a more neighbourhood and city-friendly transformation. To provide the aimed social cohesion between existing and new residential groups, with the stated key topics, La Mina could face a different, more optimistic future without relocating or losing its residents and still providing them with affordable housing options.