Tourism has returned to the city. There are no exact figures. But according to experts, the influx of tourists is practically at the levels before the pandemic years, if not above (and despite higher prices). It's May 1st. It's a splendid day in Barcelona and walking from Plaça de la Catedral to the Eixample means walking at the pace that the tide allows, like any other walk.
Arriving at Carrer Consell de Cent with Rambla de Catalunya, they ask us to move forward stuck to the wall. The cameras follow the mayoress in a lively conversation with two neighbors. Ada Colau is shooting a campaign video and records it in a distinctive space of her mandate: the Consell de Cent superilla.
In this area, ten years ago, there was a lot of traffic. Neighbors parked in the street and the most frequented place was a colmado of Pakistanis. There was only one restaurant. Today there are four and two more are planned. The area, according to the new terminology used by urban planning, has been pacified.
Pacifying means restricting or eliminating vehicle traffic, gaining green space and giving pedestrians more room to run. Appeasement has collateral effects. It shoots up rents and business incomes, causing gentrification (when the neighbors with more money who have just arrived displace the poorer ones). It also favors nocturnal activity. When the supervilla is finished, it will give continuity to the lower part of Enric Granados, an area of terraces very frequented by tourists, expats and young locals.
Edward Glaeser and Carlo Ratti have just proposed a new city model for New York (The New York Times, May 10). They call it playground city. They reason that mayors should think more about the pleasure of their citizens and be less dependent on productivity. If talent does not set foot in the city because it has been kidnapped by the internet and Netflix, the authorities must fill the streets with bars, restaurants, libraries, theaters, street markets, grocery stores and pop-up stores.
New York is the city of metamorphoses. In the seventies it went into depression when it lost the manufacturing industry. He solved it with the knowledge industry and finance. Those changes were important for Barcelona, also dislocated by the loss of traditional industry. Pasqual Maragall was then living in Baltimore and took note of all that. Post-Olympic Barcelona is partly a child of this vision. But since he could not aspire to financial capital, he found the replacement in tourism.
The current transformation has to do with digitization. And the catalyst is the large number of empty offices left by the pandemic. Economists compare these cities to a doughnut. In the center, those in New York, San Francisco or Chicago, there are empty offices. In the periphery, the residents.
The donut effect is combated with a center well connected to a nearby periphery, either by public or private transport and in a reasonable time. The second recipe is to change this center. Convert office buildings into homes. Make the streets more attractive with more cultural and recreational offers.
Glaeser and Ratti, the former an economist and the latter an architect, are regulars in global urban planning. The first one knows the supervillas of Barcelona. The playground city they are talking about resembles previous urban projects (consumer city). The difference is that it is now taken for granted that telecommuting (in its absolute or hybrid version) is here to stay.
It is interesting to compare Barcelona with American concerns. The Catalan capital has no problems for people to go to the center. At least I didn't have them. But the lack of maintenance in the Renfe suburbs makes things very complicated. The car restriction maybe too.
Barcelona does not suffer from the donut effect. It has empty offices, but far from the center. They were designed to house technology companies, the ones that practice telecommuting the most. But it is difficult to transform them into housing: the legislation requires that 30% of developments be reserved for social housing (for the low-cost population that caters to tourism or for young people, who are leaving). The result is that promoters do not move. Like the big American cities, Barcelona has a serious housing problem, but it is more difficult to solve here. The city is already too small to accommodate all the demand.
Barcelona has no problems filling the centre. He has all the tourists he wants (and the ones he doesn't want). It is an ideal destination for "digital nomads", expats who live more and more in the neighborhoods.
Finally, the great paradox. Barcelona's Eixample is getting closer every day to Glaeser and Ratti's playground city ideal. Barcelona's pacification, born of an alternative vision of the city, converges with the models of global capitalism. With effects contrary to those intended: more tourism and more inequality in the neighborhoods where it operates.
Maragall's Olympic Barcelona did not obtain an absolute consensus on its day. There was opposition and nostalgia for the pre-Olympic city, especially in the world of culture. Today it has been idealized.
Colau's superisles are born with a narrower support. Time will tell if they are a success or if they will accelerate ongoing trends (more tourism, gentrification). We will find out if Barcelona is the global city of miracles. The one everyone wants to visit. The one that combines hostels with digital nomads, conferences with social housing.
