According to the Spanish Royal Academy of Language the verb jubilar can mean “to dispose of something as no longer useful” and “to be happy, to rejoice”. In this case, the Ciudad Jubilada is the city that is born and reinvents itself from its waste, calling for, and celebrating ways of being and doing.
The project uses the format of a brief dictionary to document the specific phenomenon of informal allotments located by rivers on the outskirts of Barcelona, in order to reflect on the different realities that are representative of the city and contemporary society. In order to do so, it bases itself on a common reality in many present-day cities: the appropriation of land and self-build sites in empty spaces on the periphery.
The main thesis of the book is that informal allotments flourish as the result of the convergence of three types of waste. Firstly, the land planning system generates empty spaces running parallel to infrastructures. Secondly, we have retired citizens who are viewed as waste left over from the labour system. And, finally, we have the material waste, the rubbish dumped by the manufacturing system itself, which can be found in different corners of the periphery. If these three residual elements are found on minimally fertile land then the allotment is up and running. The empty spaces will provide the land, the retired people will provide the workforce and the rubbish will provide the building materials.
Informal allotments represent a profound challenge with regard to the essential parameters of urban planning. The untameable nature of the periphery offers examples of autonomy of use and form which would be unthinkable in the domesticated city, and invite us to imagine the city from a non-preestablished relationship between the citizens and their surroundings.