ABSTRACT
The residents of Russafa, in Valencia, had heard about Parc Central 30 years before its construction began. A portion of the park was finally inaugurated at the end of 2018, while national, regional and city-level governments still fight over the viability of building the remaining part, which depends on the construction of a €3.1 billion 9-km tunnel across the city. In the decades waiting for the park, Russafa, a historically working-class neighborhood and multicultural hub since the 1990s, has seen a growing gentrification trend driven by speculation relating to the expected park’s benefits, neighborhood revitalization and more recently, tourism and changes in housing rental markets. This chapter reviews the politics, financing, materiality and ecology in the making of the rail-to-park mega-project of Valencia Parc Central, and how such processes relate to gentrification dynamics. It also examines Russafa’s civic attempts to align the construction of a green space more closely with local needs.
Keywords
the urban development pattern of the city and neighborhood: large-scale urban renewal, touristification, creative industries, entrepreneurial urbanism, sustainable urban design
the urban greening of the neighborhood/city: rail-to-park transformation, public-private green partnership, iconic parks, linear green space
the inequalities at stake: (green) gentrification, speculative urbanism, private capture of public investment
