Translation of an article by Josep Maria Montaner, Councilor for Housing, Barcelona City Hall published in El Periodico on 6 May 2017

The city is rolling out a redistributive urban model based on adaptation and renovation, which prioritizes the right to decent housing

Two years on from the municipal elections, Barcelona is putting together a new urban project. In contrast to previous eras, this new project isn’t hierarchical, nor does it start with preconceived ideas, or consist in megaprojects. It isn’t conceived or represented by any individual. Rather, it’s a project that’s been worked on and shared by a political, social and professional movement; drawn up collectively, dynamically, as a network, based on debates in every neighbourhood and led, for the first time, by a woman.

It’s a redistributive urban model, based on adapting and renovating. It’s a model that, for the first time, doesn’t seek the monumental or the exceptional, but prioritizes the right to decent housing as the pillar of all policy. It’s a model that recovers and consolidates the public sphere, starting with the remunicipalization of the city’s water, the creation of the Metropolitan Energy Agency, and the principle that public land will remain public. It understands housing as a public service, and the city as made up of spaces for living in. That’s why investment in refurbishment, which had fallen to historic lows under the previous government, is at a record high of 46 million Euros in 2017. This budget will go to proactive refurbishments that focus on habitability in the neighbourhoods that need it most.

STRENGTHENING URBAN LIFE

This redistributive ‘post-model’ is expressed differently in each place, strengthening the vibrancy of urban life, just as Jane Jacobs advocated. That’s why we’ve drawn up a Plan for Neighbourhoods. We’ve moved from prioritizing the central avenues of Diagonal, Passeig de Gràcia and the luxury port to the neglected neighbourhoods of North Besós, the Raval and the Marina del Prat Vermell, where we’re remodeling public space between modern housing blocks and reaching every individual and family, either through rent subsidies or information offices on legal rights, all with a significant focus on coordination to improve public health and education.

This new city project has used the Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodation to control mass tourism and protect residential housing and the ability of people to stay in their neighbourhoods. The Plan is complemented by the measures in the Plan for the Right to Housing in Barcelona (2016–2025), which will triple the affordable public housing stock over the next ten years. We’ve used all available instruments, as well as creating new ones, including: the Unit against Residential Exclusion, which aims to tackle the housing crisis and promote the social function of housing; the Metropolitan Housing Observatory to provide basic information on housing stock, and the promotion of new forms of ownership such as cooperatives and co-housing.

A GREEN AND HARMONIOUS CITY

In order for this urban system to work as well as possible, we’re ramping up the process to move us towards a green and harmonious city, with sustainable mobility. We’re increasing the number of bike lanes, reorganizing the bus network, and creating more green routes. For the first time, Barcelona has included gender equality in urban planning, an essential tool to improve the quality of daily life.

Barcelona is learning from other contemporary urban models, including positive ecology in Curitiba (Brazil) or the pioneering sustainability work of Seattle (USA), as well exchanging experiences with cities like New York, Paris, Berlin and Vienna. Nevertheless, the plan is ultimately the fruit of the DNA of the city and its citizens; creative, critical and innovative, capable of harnessing the best qualities of urbanism.

TACTICAL URBANISM

What is happening in Barcelona is everyday urbanism that prioritizes rights over bricks and mortar; a project that is beginning to build an alternative model to neoliberalism, the name we’ve given to the new face of the capitalist patriarchy. A politics of everyday life that puts people and communities in the centre. A new urban model that is constantly tested through tactical urbanism and that recovers the projects of proximity led by pioneering women who, at the end of the 19th century, defended models of community life and the value of neighbourhoods and taught Patrick Geddes to redo and improve rather than demolish.

It’s an alternative project that is up for continual debate, review and transformation, and which will come from institutions and municipalist movements or not at all. Urban planning in Barcelona is undergoing a process of change that’s the product of hundreds of minds and that is experienced at a small scale, uniquely, in each neighbourhood.