Whatever happened to Sociopolis? Building Urban Narratives

Abstract In 2003 Sociópolis was presented at the second edition of the Valencian Art Biennial. Shortly after, it went from being "a maquette and slide-show extravaganza" to becoming a master plan for a large urban development project backed politically by the regional government and funded by state owned banks. The plan envisaged the construction of 2500 housing units in the Southern suburbs of Valencia, Spain. 13 international architecture offices published their concepts for social housing schemes. In 2017 the projects, it seems, will never be finished. In the meantime, most of the actors involved in Sociópolis have been erased by the effects of the economic crisis and the conditions of the construction industry have dramatically changed.The story of Sociópolis raises critical issues relevant to our understanding of the urban spaces’ production processes and shows how those are intertwined with complex economic systems, modes of political governance, citizen's wishes and desires, and the arts. Its -at least partial- failure prompts a reflection on the gap among model, project and reality.By reconstructing the sequence of events surrounding Sociopolis, as a case-study of failed large urban developments, through archival and field research bringing methods from architecture - mappings and spatial diagrams - and from social sciences - qualitative interviews - into an architecture history and urban geography research, I intend to gain an understanding of the actors at play in urban processes and their, sometimes, controversial narratives, thus developping a history of Sociópolis as it is, as it was and as it would - might- be. The multiperspective storytelling of Sociopolis will reveal insights on the underresearched relationship between architecture and real estate.