Ageing Cities: The Futures of Late Life Urbanism on the Spanish coast (project funded by BBVA Foundation’s Leonardo Grants for Researchers and Cultural Creators 2024) wishes to study the Spanish Mediterranean coast as a present and future laboratory of versions of the ‘good life’ under the sun, at a peculiar moment when housing, demographic and environmental crises are coalescing into the perfect storm. For more than fifty years, the Spanish Mediterranean coast, one of the main hotspots of ‘retirement migration’ in the continent, has developed a signature approach to late life urbanism: with a great investment in urban infrastructures of care and urban accessibility transforming dwellings, as well as urban equipment, such as public transports, parks and beaches. In this critical context of urban forms of aging the project has two main objectives: (i) studying the genealogy of late life urbanism (undertaking fieldwork and archival research) in one of the following enclaves: Costa Blanca (Alicante), Costa del Sol (Málaga), the coast of Barcelona or Mallorca; and (ii) eliciting the imagination around the futures of late life urbanism (by means of immersive speculative workshops) within planetary boundaries. 

The project will run from October 2024 to March 2026.

Funding Body: BBVA Foundation

Start date: 01/10/2024

End date: 31/03/2026

Funds: 39 878€