Madrid Río, El Matadero and the Nature of Urbanization

ABSTRACT<br>This essay considers two closely related high-profile urban renewal projects that have altered the landscape of the southern region of Madrid since 2007: Madrid Río and El Matadero Madrid Centro de Creación Contemporánea. While the former is often cast as renovating the “natural” ecology of the city and the latter a renovation of its cultural landscape, both Madrid Río and El Matadero commodify the closely-related concepts of ecological sustainability. By analyzing the discourses of nature and ecological sustainability each one circulates and contrasting these discourses with their material expression in the urban landscape, we argue that these projects find new ways of enclosing, containing, packaging and selling “Nature” in Madrid on a global scale. In doing so, they throw into relief the ways that cultural production frames our relationship and understanding of ecological sensibility The production of new urban environments and the infrastructure that makes them possibl