Barcelona debates its economic future in the second edition of the REACT conference

The Barcelona City Council will re-edit the REACT conferences this week. If the first edition was marked by the debate on the city's economic future in the post-coronavirus context, this time the dialogue will open up to new complications that have arisen during this year, focusing on the war in Ukraine.

From this Wednesday until Friday, more than 60 speakers and local, national, and international leaders will once again discuss the strategic lines to follow as a city for the coming years and will delve into some of the issues outlined in last year's edition, such as the initiative to fill empty ground-floor commercial spaces in the city center with activity. In this way, they will talk about how Barcelona can diversify its economy and boost innovation, with the aim of strengthening its brand as a city to live, work, and visit.

For the first deputy mayor of the Barcelona City Council, Jaume Collboni, this second edition has a dual objective. "On the one hand, to demonstrate the level of concreteness and development of the milestones that we, as a municipal government, set for ourselves two years ago with the Barcelona Green Deal, the roadmap that must guide ---and is guiding--- the transformation and diversification of the city's economy towards a model of shared prosperity and greater resilience, that leaves no one behind. REACT will allow us to report to the citizens on the current state of the major projects we are promoting in the city and that will change its physiognomy by 2030. On the other hand, the consolidation of these conferences is a clear sign of how Barcelona is capable of leading the global debate on what cities should be like in a changing, post-coronavirus environment," he points out.

Unlike last year, this time the conferences will be concentrated at the Disseny Hub. This was also the main location of the first edition, but it was combined with others such as the Olympic Port, La Boqueria, and the Olympic Stadium. Likewise, with the pandemic increasingly overcome, the organization has opted for a completely in-person program. In the first edition of REACT, there were 850 in-person attendees and 2,200 online attendees.

The thematic axes of the second edition of REACT will be people, the planet, and progress. In addition to the re-economization of the city center, there will be discussions on the promotion of sectors such as sports and culture as a source of quality employment; the transformation of urban space to make it less polluting; the future of the audiovisual sector; and the role of cities in the face of the climate emergency. There will also be presentations on topics such as cultural connection with Latin America, gastronomy, and creativity and design in industry.

Some of the speakers who will participate include the president of the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC) in Barcelona, Sandra Bestraten; the director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Francesco La Camera; the president of the Acadèmia del Cinema Català, Judith Colell; urban policy expert Bruce Katz; the CEO of Barcelona Savills España, Anna Gener; and the managing director of Integrated Systems Events, Mike Blackman. Institutional representation will include the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau; the vice president of the Government and minister for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera; the minister of Science and Innovation, Diana Morant; Collboni; and the third deputy mayor, Laia Bonet.