From noise control to quietizenship

Privatizing public space in Plaça del Sol, Barcelona

Bibliographic Data

ID21558087
AuthorsAnastasia Zisakou (0000-0002-8754-6262, Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona, corresponding author)
Year2026
Pages1-20
Publication date2026-07-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Urban Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0735-2166 • E-ISSN: 1467-9906
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07352166.2026.2685614
OpenAlexW7167724469
LanguageEN
References cited54

This article examines how noise governance reconfigures public space and citizenship in Plaça del Sol, a square in Barcelona’s Gràcia neighborhood. Drawing on an ethnographic approach (19 interviews and 1 year of participant observation), it traces a sequence from measurement (sensors, sound-level measurements) through regulation (police sweeps, terrace expansion, redesign of benches, planters, and playground) to counter-assemblages (users’ subversions). As the analysis shows, measurement operates as a citizenship device, translating disturbance into thresholds that sort admissible from inadmissible presences, while regulatory routines operationalize these thresholds to privilege paying, seated users on privatized terraces. Street drinkers/non-consuming publics become conditionally present—tolerated, surveilled, or removable—leaving the square in a liminal state at the threshold of privatization. In response, everyday re-appropriations (re-signifying the playground at night, repurposing planters) expose the contingency of control. Conceptually, the article links sonic governance to hybrid public/private topologies and specifies quietizenship as an emergent mode of urban citizenship premised on silence, compliance (with sociospatial restrictions), and purchase; empirically, it shows how human—nonhuman assemblages (devices, furniture, cleaning routines, noise control operations) enact these shifts in situ.

Control (management) · Key (lock) · Noise (video) · Public policy · Public space · Space (punctuation) · Latin American Urban Studies · Urban Planning and Governance · Urbanization and City Planning

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