Fighting the myth and nostalgia: Collective databases for a creative city in the Vega of Granada

Abstract

This fertile mixed field known as Vega is on the western border of the city and forms part of an area much larger than the actual border with Granada. lt was considered both an economic engine and an unquestioned landscape value in the 19th century. This was the reason why the urban planning always tried to avoid urban development in its direction. The research, still in progress and carried out from a teaching framework, studies the urban potential of this 'sacred' space, trying to demonstrate that in functional, spatial, and symbolic terms the possibilities for intervention considerably exceed its value as a pseudo-agricultural area that needs to be protected. The discovery of problems and rules of internal functioning, architectural typologies and mutations, old and new ways of life, become critical elements for measuring intervention in a territory that is so susceptible to change, so mythologised, where real knowledge and creativity without prejudices are parameters that must be equally considered.