Bilbao and Barcelona ‘in Motion’. How Urban Regeneration ‘Models’ Travel and Mutate in the Global Flows

This paper explores how the so-called Bilbao effect and Barcelona Model are diffused internationally through what may be called urban policy tourism: short trips made to Bilbao and Barcelona by policy-makers to learn from their regeneration in the past 15 years. The paper reveals for the first time the substantial extent of this practice and contextualises it within a wider phenomenon of urban policy transfer and the international ‘motion ’ of urban policies. Although both models are internationally known for a set of elements, this research shows that in fact the messages mutate and shift as they circulate through the policy circuits. Ultimately, however, the popularity of the Bilbao and Barcelona models suggests a process of global urban policy convergence. of a post-authoritarian regime to culturally vibrant magnets of visitors, and all in only a few decades. They have been constructed into ‘places for consumption ’ (Urry, 1995) for policy-makers and professionals in the planning and architecture sphere who want to know the secrets of their success. This paper investigates policy-makers ’ experiences in learning, producing and exchanging inter-national stories about ‘what works ’ in urban regeneration by focusing on these two model cities. In particular, it presents the findings of The Next Bilbaos and Barcelonas In the world of urban policy-making, there is a fascination for cities that have man-aged to turn around their economic for-tunes or emerge like a phoenix after crisis. Occasionally, some cities acquire a ‘para-digmatic ’ or ‘celebrity ’ status as they seem to “sum up an era, the place where it all comes together ” (Thrift, 1997, p. 142). If Paris was the capital of modernity and Los Angeles of post-modernity, Bilbao and Barcelona in Spain have become meccas fo