The neighbourhood of Trinitat Nova began to be built in the 1950s and 60 in the northern outskirts of the city of Barcelona to meet the huge demand for social housing due to the influx of immigrants who were attracted by the industrial growth of the city.

The first blocks of flats were built without any urban planning and without taking into account the design of public spaces. The flats were very small and the construction of poor quality. Trinitat Nova is an example of so-called “vertical slums” that emerged different parts of the periphery of the city to house the masses of immigrants.

The area is bounded on the North by the slope of the Sierra de Collserola and on the South and East by two traffic intensive routes, Ronda de Dalt and Avenida Meridiana, respectively. The layout of these routes, which separate the neighbourhood from the rest of the city, was already foreseen in the “Plan de Enlaces” approved in 1917, whose main objective was to adapt the city to the needs of a metropolis, by expanding the plans of the “Proyecto de Enlaces de la Zona de Ensanche de Barcelona y de los Pueblos Agregados”. , from 1907. This road layout was respected in the plot division made later by the City Council between 1929 and 1936.

In 1953, three public bodies – “Obra Sindical del Hogar”, “Instituto Nacional de la Vivienda” and “Patronato Municipal de la Vivienda” - launched the construction of various housing developments without having approved yet a Master Plan. This plan was drafted in 1957 to legalize what was already built.

In 1996, the neighbours’ association took the initiative to launch a Community Plan with the purpose of refurbishing or replacing a housing stock severely damaged because of the poor quality of the construction, in particular for the serious problems arising from the aluminous cement used in the construction of the structural elements of the buildings. The plan also called for the creation of a system of paths to facilitate the movement within the neighbourhood and the communication with the adjacent districts.

Following this initiative, in 1999 the City Council approved a “Modification to the General Metropolitan Plan” in Trinitat Nova, taking on the findings of the Community Plan.

Later, and until the final approval of the “Special Plan of Interior Reform (“Pla Especial de Reforma Interior”)” in 2002, that regulates the alignments and volumes of the blocks, the neighbours’ association kept being involved in the decision-making processes that affected the urban planning and the buildings, through the organization of participatory workshops. “Trinitat Nova, in search for new sustainable neighbourhood” (“Trinitat Nova, por un nuevo barrio sostenible”), is one of the workshops organized by the association together with the team in charge of the “Community Plan”. Only some of the proposals that arose from these workshops have been implemented.

Currently, the final stages of the redevelopment of the neighbourhood are being finalized, and the last housing blocks foreseen in the “Special Plan of Interior Reform” are being completed.

In the early 1990s, the first cases of degradation of reinforced concrete structures containing aluminium were detected in the neighbourhood of Trinitat Nova. On the one hand, this fact led the neighbourhood association to launch, in 1996, a Community Plan whose starting point was to make a diagnosis of the state of the neighbourhood considering four areas: urban, educational, economic and social. On the other hand, the City Council commissioned a study in 1998 aimed at addressing the deteriorating situation of housing. Following this work, the most affected buildings were identified (one third of the total housing in the neighbourhood) and a program was proposed to demolish the affected blocks and to replace them with new housing.

In 1999, the City Council, the Catalan Land Institute and the neighbourhood association of Trinitat Nova signed an agreement for the replacement of about 900 affected apartments. This joint work between governments and neighbours has become a benchmark on citizen participation in urban transformations in the early twenty-first century. Throughout the various stages of remodelling carried out between 2003 and 2013, 504 new homes were completed and handed over. In 2013 and 2014, the construction of new blocks of flats,that are still not finished, began.

In this context, the research project Prohabit aims to answer the following question: How do they neighbours live, perceive and value the changes that are happening in the neighbourhood? For this purpose the following research topics will be addressed:

•      How do neighbours perceive the transformation of the neighbourhood? How does it affect their image/identity perception of the place?
•      What impact do changes of residence have –from the old to the new housing- on people? How do the changes affect their daily lives? How does the waiting time affect those who have not been relocated yet?
•      What is the value that the different neighbourhood residents (former residents relocated - or waiting to be so-, newcomers) give to the new buildings and infrastructures? How do they use them?
•      How do residents value the participatory process that was carried out at the end of the last century and in the beginning of the current one? Have the expected results been achieved? Has the remodelling project contributed to strengthen the community structure of Trinitat Nova?