Redistribuir valor en la ciudad financiarizada: planeamiento y vivienda protegida en Barcelona

This article examines the possibilities and limits of urban planning to produce and distribute affordable housing within a financialised housing system. Focusing on the requirement introduced in Barcelona in 2018 to allocate 30% of the residential floor area of certain developments on consolidated urban land to affordable housing, it examines what happens when the regulation of property transformation is mobilised for redistributive purposes. Through a qualitative case study based on documentary and regulatory analysis, secondary data and interviews, the article distinguishes three dimensions of planning’s redistributive capacity: capture, materialisation and spatial distribution. The case shows that these dimensions diverge: an obligation may remain in place without being fully materialised, while mechanisms facilitating implementation preserve the quantitative contribution while altering its geography. These dimensions reveal different frontiers of planning capacity within a financialised system. Planning redefines the conditions of property transformation and links them to collective objectives, but does not fully control their materialisation or spatial distribution. The frontiers of financialisation thus emerge as mobile and contested institutional and spatial limits to public capacity to govern urban transformation.