The new strategic plan for Barcelona broadens the focus to the city of five million inhabitants
For 35 years, Barcelona has imagined how it wants to be and where it wants to go. Mayor Pasqual Maragall was the one who started this path, creating an office to draw up the first strategic city plan in 1988, in line with the long beams that other European and American cities were setting. With the transformation that the Catalan capital experienced with the Olympic Games as a backdrop, the local administration wanted to find a way to monitor the changes that were taking place and to do it jointly between the different social and economic agents.
The internationalization that Barcelona experienced from 1992, as well as the crisis that followed, gradually modified the vision of the future that it wanted to promote, incorporating elements such as the knowledge economy and expanding the radius of action. In 2003, Barcelona looked beyond its borders and opted to strengthen the relationship with the 36 municipalities that surround it, where 3.3 million people live, a commitment that crystallized in 2010 with the creation of a unique and pioneering governing body in all of Spain, the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB).
Now, with a consolidated AMB, the new revision of the plan, with the year 2030 as the horizon, wants to broaden the focus even more and include some 200 municipalities that surround Barcelona, spread over a much larger area than the metropolitan area and with a population that rises to 5.4 million inhabitants, going from Vendrell to Malgrat de Mar, passing through Sabadell, Terrassa and Granollers. “The new strategy challenges the whole of the metropolitan territory, the real city,” defends the new plan. From the metropolitan area, the area closest to the Catalan capital and with a similar density, to the metropolitan region, located a radius further from the city and less populated.
“Despite the economic, social and territorial consolidation of the metropolitan dynamics, we continue without having adequate government instruments to be able to face the challenges that arise”, he adds, “all of this has relevant repercussions in the provision of services , the endowment and management of infrastructures and local financing, which translates into significant territorial inequalities”. The question, therefore, is not just to broaden the focus but to develop “a collaborative metropolitan governance that overcomes the difficulties derived from administrative delimitations and knows how to adapt to the variable geometry of the challenges”. The proposal of the Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan (PEMB), coordinated by Oriol Estela and chaired by the Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, to overcome the metropolitan area and provide instruments to this new region of action has met with rejection of socialist mayors such as Antonio Balmon (Cornellà de Llobregat) and Nuria Marín (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat).
Beyond the instruments that the PEMB defends that are missing to structure this metropolitan region, halfway between the AMB and the Barcelona Provincial Council, the plan has detected missions, terminology inspired by the economist Mariana Mazzucato and that refers to closeness of action that must allow the articulation of this diverse identity made up of 200 municipalities. The eight missions of the metropolitan region include issues such as economic competitiveness, decent work, mobility, housing policies and territorial cohesion, but also the food model and culture. All of them translate into specific objectives that must be achieved by 2030, such as dedicating 1.2% of GDP to R&D or increasing cultural participation by 10%.
Objectives for the metropolitan region for 2030
- Innovative and inclusive economy
Allocate at least 1.2% of GDP to private investment in R&D.
- Sufficient rent levels
Guarantee the salary levels of the current collective agreements based on a reference minimum salary.
- environmental emergency and
Achieve a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
- Sustainable and safe mobility
Achieve a change in the modal distribution of trips of 10% in favor of ecomobility.
The diet will be based on 60% local foods.
The population with low income will not exceed 25% in the set of vulnerable neighborhoods.
The population that suffers overload due to rental expenses and essential supplies will be less than 30%.
Increase the participation of the population in cultural life by 10%.