Com canviar quan els canvis són difícils? Avantatges i desavantatges de la Barcelona competitiva des de l'economia simbòlica

Abstract

Despite of historical economic changes, cities have always been the efficient pinpoint of production systems. In this article I postulate that at the first decade of the twenty-first century, the symbolic economy seems the equivalent to what in previous periods were the Fordism or the Flexible Production System. The objective is to analyze how the symbolic economy is formed, how the cultural good is commodified and who demands it. In Barcelona, buildings as the MACBA, designed by Richard Meier, or the AGBAR tower, by Jean Nouvel, are public and private investments, respectively, which constitute two of the global city symbols. The MACBA was specifically designed to be a cultural institution. Otherwise, the AGBAR tower is an office premise. In this article I argue that many of the symbolic elements were not built as such, but they are part of the symbolic economy of a city.