WHISPER CITY: MAPPING URBAN STREETSCAPES

SITE // Barcelona, Spain
PROGRAM // self directed research; urban analysis
- ADVISOR // Francesc Munoz, Departament de Geografia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
SEMESTER // fall 2019

“When I first descended upon the neighborhood of Raval, Barcelona, I had just arrived for my study abroad program in Spain. I was met with a neighborhood that was unlike I had ever lived. There were stores within minutes outside my door, and more languages than I could count being spoken around me. Scooters, bikes, and skateboards whizzed by me at every hour of the day. People walked up and down the busy streetside at every hour of the day, some smoking, some carrying bags of groceries, some carrying children, some selling beer. It was a dynamic street that inspired me.”

Whisper City explores the neighborhood of el Raval, Barcelona, as urban laboratory and specifically carrer Joaquin Costa as an opportunity to map the urban streetscape. The project, which consists mainly of using digital tools including ArcGIS, Elk 2 plugin for Grasshopper, and various other urban spatial analysis to posit el Raval as a neighborhood of interest. Other qualitative discovery-based methodologies include photography and graphic design as a means to challenge the role of representation, research, and design. The research is currently in progress as of November 2019.

overlay diagram of public transport lines, amenities (green), and shops (pink) within interest area of Raval

SLOW [a photoessay]

In an attempt to better understand the context of the neighborhood that I was going to live in for the next four months, I decided to photograph its main thoroughfare, carrer Joaquin Costa, at different times during the day. I also began to question how Raval is represented in touristic media and its relationship to Barcelona as a whole. As it turns out, the neighborhood of Raval does not have shining reviews on TripAdvisor.

As a result, the following images, photographed by myself, are overlaid with reviews about the area left from different people on the travel forum. The titles of each photograph are the titles of each review left from the particular person writing it. None of it is written by me.

The compositions challenge the way we choose to view a city, and how aspirations of “living like a local” are often met with unfortunate results. Whether this is a result of the urban fabric remains yet to be seen, but conclusive evidence from the photography suggests that there is a stark negative view of the area that piqued my interest. Is the area truly as bad as it is represented on the internet, and does it deserve its reputation? Is Joaquin Costa upsetting locals and even gentrifying the area? These questions and more arose after this experiment.