“Megan Saltzman's remarkable work, Public Everyday Space: Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Barcelona, deserves praise not only for its depth of research but also for its profound political significance. It’s based on almost two decades of interdisciplinary research, enabling an understanding of subtle and nuanced ways of resistance to the commodification, surveyance and regulation of city spaces. By analyzing a very wide of urban processes and cultural artifacts, it brings together the disciplines of Urban Ethnography and Hispanic Cultural Studies. Its use of an accessible language makes it an attractive book for anyone interested in a cultural and political horizon of emancipation from neoliberal capitalism. Saltzman's work is more than just a scholarly endeavor; it serves as a call for change, challenging the prevailing norms of urban development and advocating for a more democratic and inclusive city.” (Luis Moreno Caballud, Associate Professor of Iberian Studies, University of Pennsylvania, United States) “Refreshingly clear and grounded in its prose, this singular think-piece guides readers through the cultural expressions and spaces of struggle that constitute the contested city of Barcelona today. The author covers a terrain rich with poetic suggestion and political debate that explores the interconnected, rhizomatic layers of grassroots politics, struggles against gentrification, and the policing of subjects excluded from the processes of privatization and property speculation.” (Jonathan Snyder, Academic Director, Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), Spain) “This welcome addition to the study of post-1992 Barcelona draws our attention to the life-building potential of spatial tactics, grassroots activism and acts of neighborhood citizenship to oppose and escape the logics of the neoliberal city. Drawing from the Deleuze-inspired concept of rhizomatic dissensus, Public Everyday Space: Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Barcelona shows the political importance and liberating promise in fragile, mobile and temporary forms of urban resistance. The solidarity and survival techniques of migrants, the poor and caring citizens give us in this way a glimpse of another possible city, one governed beyond financial and brand-making principles. Saltzman’s rich approach brings together the insights of ethnography, sociology, philosophy and geography, but also those of film and literary studies to her analyses. In so doing, this terrific new book continues to demonstrate the added value that urban cultural studies bring to the study of cities, in a Hispanic context and beyond.” (Mari-Paz Balibrea, Reader in Spanish Cultural Studies, Birbeck, University of London, UK)  

Analyzes both public spaces (urban furniture, practices therein) as well as cultural representations of public spaces Exposes how neoliberalization of public space has marginalized local inhabitants and things of less economic power Documents grassroots efforts to recover public spaces and challenge mass tourism, gentrification, anti-social design