IN-PERSON Barcelona. Section A

Abstract

How do refugees shape the identity of today’s global city and its environmental policy? This paper compares Barcelona and Shanghai–two coastal, metropolitan commercial centers serving as models for urban greening while hosting high volume tourism. Both Barcelona and Shanghai boast of rich histories of refugee migration, but leverage these identities differently. Post-industrial Barcelona presently rejects tourism, instead declaring itself an “open city” to refugees. As a “city of refuge,” its redesign includes “climate shelters” for those seeking “refuge” from extreme weather (Amorim-Maia, et al 2023). Industrial Shanghai seeks to boost tourism. Its cosmopolitan branding early on followed Barcelona’s blueprint for urban revitalization ahead of hosting its 1992 Olympic Games, including converting industrial land into parks and developing waterways for sport and entertainment (Fan, et al 2017). Shanghai’s meteoric rise has attracted domestic migrants and international business, but it is not particularly welcoming to refugees. Its tourism promotes the city’s historical diversity and significant role in sheltering European Jews escaping the Nazi Holocaust while simultaneously celebrating and repressing its current-day Tibetan and Uyghur minorities. By studying these two cities’ refugee and environmental policies side-by-side, this paper asks: How does the north-to-south course of industrial development and the reverse flows of refugees from south-to-north connect Barcelona to Shanghai and Europe to Asia? How do narrations of “refuge” from climate and racial injustices inform the cultural heritage of global cities? How does the term “refuge” forge urban sites of exception that overlay Europe’s historical antisemitism with present-day global Islamophobia?