Opportunism as a good practice for the regeneration of obsolete neighborhoods: a methodological approach to urban reality

Abstract

This article is part of a series of works that are intended to explore alternatives to the model of urban sprawl that is characteristic of the second half of the twentieth century. In response to the unsustainable use of land, it starts from a zero-growth assumption that is based on the recovery of inherited housing stock, enhancing and completing the existing in response to the challenges of today's society. This hypothesis is based on the demographic and economic potential that many neighbourhoods of socalled first urban periphery have1 . This has been defined as the area of urban expansion that was built to the urgent quantitative needs of homes existing in Europe at the end of the mid-century wars due to massive migration from the countryside to cities2 . It should be understood that these areas have been in a strategic position between historic city centres and the new developments that have emerged in the real estate boom3 . This makes them appear as areas of opportunity in the move towards sustainable city models departing from approaches that seek to “optimize, preserve or increase the value of all the existing urban capital (social, urbanism, built heritage, etc.), in contrast to other ways of intervention which, inside this urban capital, only prioritizes and preserves the value of the land”4 . Despite taking the precepts of the modern city compiled in the Charter of Athens (1933) – the basis of the western urban theory – they can be recognized as areas that have grown without an overall view, "urbanized areas where the construction of town is absent"5 . In this sense, their development has led to spontaneous processes through which the inhabitants of these neighbourhoods have modified the original morphology using natural processes to adapt the generic typologies to the specific modes of life and the particular conditions of their own place. Therefore, this article recognizes these processes within the concept of urban opportunism. Characterized by spontaneity and therefore lacking of regulation, these processes have historically been valued by experts and other urban agents as anomalous situations by “claiming that have associated negative effects on the habitability of the built environment” 6 . However, we wonder about the extent to which this fact can be used as a useful tool to address the plurality and the instability that characterizes Bauman’s liquid modern society7 . Before analysing an example in the Andalusian context, the article reflects the experience of the urban model of the city of Tokyo as a reference for these spontaneous processes of city construction. Subsequently, it picks a prospective methodology for a specific study case that is based on the recognition of the concept of opportunism as good practice to regenerate obsolete neighbourhoods.