ABSTRACT
In the introduction to Barcelonas English edition, Manuel Vázquez Montalban (1992, p.8) wrote the following words: In Olympic Barcelona, the critics of Franquist town planning have become the managers of Olympic urban development, and the neighbourhood associations which led the struggle against speculation in the 1960s and 1970s have been disbanded. The city is critically disarmed. Conservative realism is the prevailing ideology and the pragmatists have won the day. Contests between the critic and the pragmatists are always loaded in favour of the latter. The work of the pragmatist, after all, is on permanent display while the opinions of the critic collect dust on library shelves. This chapter expresses that whether the work of the elitist-pragmatist can be allowed to collect dust on library shelves while the critical work is produced and used by people in the streets?.
