Ciutat Vella. Ciutat Vella. The heart of the city lies in many overlapping layers corresponding to developments in the city from the medieval time on. The Ciutat Vella, or old city, is stunning, damp, decorated and labyrinthine. The spirit of the old city is exciting and upsetting, time and space are confused. Some say Picasso created cubism by looking at its rooftops. It is a “barbarian” city plan, (none), and recent civic initiatives do little to change that. The best place to contemplate the psychological and spiritual effects of such a sublime place is a quiet modernist cafe such as the Café Paraguas, or a rooftop.

El Raval, a former factory district just outside the old city center, has historically been home to the city's poor and working class, and still shows the neglect usually present in such areas. Particularly shocking is the Plaza San Ramon: broad daylight prostitution and drug activity on a very large scale is overlooked by police and any political consideration. Tuberculosis has been making a comeback in the area due to the Dickensian living conditions many residents suffer (mostly recent immigrants from Pakistan, Philippines, South America and Morocco). Over the past ten years the city and provincial government carried out a massive plan for gentrification urban planners have since called the "Barcelona Plan" The plan centered around the upper part of El Raval where they ripped out sections of diseased housing, built the MACBA art museum and renovated former churches and convents for cultural uses. This plan is nearly identical to Le Corbusier's "Voisin" scheme which "safeguards relics of the past and enshrines them in a framework of trees and plants" except that no gardens have been planted and no provisions made for current residents. Richard Meier's building is a little average too.

The top end of El Raval became a massive tourist draw and has since gentrified into a new role for the city. Whole city blocks have been demolished to make way for healthier, sparkling middle-class urban apartment complexes such as those along Rambla Raval. Some urban analysts such as Joan Busquets write of the “modular” effect of re arranging the architecture in Barcelona, but this mindset skips the real costs of tax investment, massive labor and human displacement. Some poor former residents have hung on, but mostly they have disappeared into other neglected zones around the city just as marginalised as they were before improvements began. Again Le C. summed up civic policy in 1924 which still plague the European city today: "...silly little reforms with which we are constantly decieving ourselves." It was a good start, but much much more is needed.

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