From self-construction to demolition: ruins with no speculative purpose in the renovation process of the city

Abstract

The city is a space in permanent transformation; the character of its historic buildings, ruins and vacant plots depends on their location, their economic value and their urban and architectural quality, as well as the period in which each part of the urban network was created. When any of these values are lost, the ruinous state may become an added quality, later leading to the transformation of the space in favour of rehabilitation, reform or regeneration processes, which frequently act as a mask for speculative behaviour. In this study, we contrast, on the one hand, the traditional relationship between the processes of ruin and demolition as a real estate strategy, characteristic of the last third of the twentieth century, and whose cycle has finally closed with new constructions; and on the other, during the first half of the twentieth century, ruins of a permanent nature located in the suburbs with no speculative purpose or expectations of renewal. In these, the process has become fossilised in the first stages, the declaration of ruin and demolition, constituting one of the essential factors of their relative vulnerability within the city.