It is not surprising to find that Zona Franca, the former commercial area of traditional industry, and 22@, the area recently zoned for logistic and technological capitalism, are part of a huge real estate operation publicised under the umbrella of Barcelona's post-industrial urban renewal. So, what economic and symbolic benefits do they generate, and for whom? What advantages do companies and institutions gain from this symbiosis? And what about the workers?

Wanja is a documentary about “the Block”, through the eyes of Auntie Barb and the life of Wanja, her blue heeler dog, recently deceased. The community on the Block's many and varied stories of Wanja reflect on the issues affecting this indigenous community in the heart of Sydney. Auntie Barb is an elder of Redfern's community: Wanja was an integral part of the community, known to all for her ability to sniff out the police -in uniform and undercover- “the Block's guardian angel”. Through Wanja, Aunty Barb and the community's memories of this tenacious, loyal, smart and loving dog tell of the early days on the Block when there were elders and families, good housing and a strong sense of community. The stories of Wanja tell us how the tension between the community and police escalated, why the housing has continued to deteriorate and largely been demolished, and why the strength of the community - it's elders, moved on. Aunty Barb was one of the last elders forced off the Block. In spite of this, Aunty Barb continues to call the Block her community and home.

City planners decide to pull down parts of Shanghai's old town in order to regenerate the city. Every year more than one hundred thousand families are forced to leave their homes and move into buildings on the edge of city. Under construction is a two- and three- dimentional flight across the now destroyed living areas of Shanghai which shows how random and brutal decisions can affect peoples's lives.

Traditionally considered to be a postmodern city, Dubai is actually a confrontation between two ways of life. The most densely populated part of the city lives in what could be considered a “modern” architecture and society. The other part, the one that is better known, is based on the postmodern philosophy that Jeremy Rifkin has described so well. SelfFiction reveals these contrasts.

An exploration of the responses of people belonging to different associations in the seaside neighborhood of La Barceloneta, who are facing an urban plan proposed by the government of Barcelona. The plan consists of placing elevators inside the traditional neighborhood houses. By criss crossing the perceptions of various characters, we perceive the creative tensions that reveal some of the ways people experience local conflicts and different ways of resolving them.

Safaris in the gaps of the empire of property speculation. Psycho-geographic wanderings.Huge urban extension of desolated and confused territories between deconstruction and construction submerged to the rhythm of daily transformations... While the constructors look ahead in the future and neighbors reclaim the past of the workers district, here we are now, in a changeable and dynamic surroundings, without known marks and orientational signs. Municipal maps are not valid here any more.Flow of human circulations are generating and modifying according to measure that urban volumes are transforming. Every movement happens to be an adventure because it won't be possible to see and experience it never again.

The upgrading of the final stretch of Diagonal avenue in Barcelona's Poble Nou area, for the launch of the "Forum" zone, will lead to the physical disappearance of entire blocks of housing and a way of life. An interview with a group of residents affected by a PERI (special renovation plan) that affects a block of ground floor houses in Poble Nou. They talk about the real estate agency's bad management and the lack of interest shown by the City Council in their excitement over the opening of the Universal Forum of Cultures.

“Located in the historic city center, the once old former Barrio Chino had become a succulent real estate treat waiting to be carved up. To the North, a legion of civilians holed up in museums, universities and centers of contemporary culture waiting until the police finished clearing the streets of the destitute. To the South, the deputies of the tourism industry unloaded the hordes of the idle from the modern cruise ships anchored in the port. It was the start of an all-out siege, a war that fed on the city's streetwalkers. The battle was waged one house at a time...”

While the housing bubble was deflating across the US, an explosion of demolition and construction was steadily transforming Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Open House documents the brutal nature of the development spree which occurred as a result of the neighborhood's re-zoning from light manufacturing/residential to the loosening of codes that allowed for forty-story towers on the waterfront. This video chronicles a neighborhood being literally torn apart by outside developers capitalizing on a frenzied housing market, and locals under pressure to “sell out” while the price is right.