Bienal de Pensamiento 2020, an opportunity for the city

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a Biennial of Thought is held this year between October 13 and 18. As a project promoted by the Barcelona City Council through the Institute of Culture and a network of collaborating cultural entities, this second edition dedicates its activities to four main itineraries: the city, democracy, technology, and the future. It offers nearly sixty events –debates, conferences, audiovisual works, performances, and guided walks– in public and recovered spaces throughout the city, such as the former Model prison, Fabra i Coats, or Can Felipa. With a glocal ambition, it features internationally renowned collaborators, such as Rosi Braidotti, Mike Davis, and Margaret Atwood, and from our closest context. Names that will put more questions than answers on the table.

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The crisis of recent months has highlighted a series of structural problems, and existing inequities for years, that respond to a fundamental question: What should be the foundations of our vital model? Given the urban planning and development policies executed to date, can we rebuild the city to make it more habitable, resilient, inclusive, healthy, sustainable, and technologically innovative? Ultimately: do we want cities to produce or to live? Questions like these were raised in the round table "City of the Future," which took place in La Modelo, moderated by Anatxu Zababeascoa and with the participation of Hashim Sakis, Roi Salgueiro, Oriol Nel·lo, and Ethel Baraona.

It is everyone's task to devise a model that takes into account the plurality of realities, and that incorporates the experiences of different groups

These months we have been able to see the Barcelona of always with a touch of strangeness. Empty, silent, flexible streets have appeared. Also unexpected uses of urban space, often creative. We have seen its sources of inequality – such as gentrification, the purchase of housing as an investment asset and not as a home, mobility or variable population density – and also community solidarity, based on neighborhood. Faced with this rupture of temporality, we have the opportunity to imagine the city of the future, designed for and by everyone for the benefit of the community. It is a common task to devise a model that takes into account the plurality of realities that comprise it, and that incorporates the experiences of different groups.

The Biennial's program translates this spirit of openness to all layers of society and also offers activities aimed at new generations. An example of this is the event scheduled for today, Saturday 17, at 5:30 p.m., "Zoomer Culture," where Ernesto Castro, Elizabeth Duval, Anna Pachecho, and Clàudia Rius will explain the emergence of new languages that, through social networks, have revolutionized the cultural paradigm. Tickets have been sold out for days, a fact that highlights the success of the call. One of the last events of the week, which will be held in the Patio de las Mujeres of the CCCB on Sunday afternoon, will be available for streaming, and recovers part of the initial reflection: "Freedom or life?". This and other questions will be addressed by Raül Garrigasait, Joan Canimas, Aida C. Rodríguez, and Bàrbara Mestanza.

Despite the capacity restrictions imposed by the pandemic situation of 2020, the will to create environments that, like agoras, maintain their critical and subversive potential remains alive. The possibilities for openness are infinite. It is time to sit down and think about how to build and inhabit a more complex city; a more ethical city that satisfies our needs, where we can develop in interdependence and with confidence, and from where we imagine the future we are heading towards.