• Madrid Río, El Matadero and the Nature of Urbanization

    Author(s):
    Matthew Feinberg, Susan Larson (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    LLC 20th- and 21st-Century Spanish and Iberian, Urban Cultural Studies
    Subject(s):
    Urban ecology (Sociology)
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Urban ecology
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/t2zn-0r67
    Abstract:
    This essay considers two closely related high-profile urban renewal projects that have altered the landscape of the southern region of Madrid since 2007: Madrid Río and El Matadero Madrid Centro de Creación Contemporánea. While the former is often cast as renovating the 'natural' ecology of the city and the latter a renovation of its cultural landscape, both Madrid Río and El Matadero commodify the closely related concepts of ecological sustainability and nature. By analyzing the circulation of these discourses of nature and ecological sustainability along with their material expression in the urban landscape, we argue that these projects find new ways of enclosing, containing, packaging and selling Nature in Madrid on a global scale. In doing so, the Madrid Río and Matadero throw into relief the ways that cultural production frames our relationship and understanding of ecological sensibility. The production of new urban environments and the infrastructure that makes them possible (the metabolic conditions and technologies that permit for the flow of energy, food, information, bodies, and things) are always mediated by institutional arrangements that are occasionally democratic, but are always deeply committed to the unending expansion of the circulation of capital—a prospect that is implicitly not ecological.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.1353/hcs.2019.0000
    Publisher:
    Project Muse
    Pub. Date:
    2020-6-7
    Journal:
    Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies
    Volume:
    23
    Issue:
    1
    Page Range:
    175 - 190
    ISSN:
    1934-9009
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial
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