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arcelona is preparing to invest 150 million euros between 2021 and 2024 in the Pla de Barris, the instrument through which the city council channels interventions in the different neighborhoods of the city to improve aspects such as education, public health, housing, employment, social rights, and sustainability. This is a key program to generate new opportunities and solve long-standing problems that continue to burden certain areas of the capital and their inhabitants. The challenge is to prevent the existence of first and second-class neighborhoods and ensure that no citizens are left behind due to residing on one street or another.
The new plan will reach 23 neighborhoods of the Catalan capital, a population of 377,000 people, and will deepen the various measures already initiated in the 2017-2020 plan, also endowed with 150 million. This budget has been invested in more than 600 actions, although most initiatives, 68%, have focused on education and social rights. With this money, 73 works have also been carried out in the different beneficiary neighborhoods of the program, such as improvements in eleven educational centers, rehabilitation or construction of 13 new facilities, and 49 public space improvement actions.
The neighborhoods that have benefited from the program are La Verneda, Bon Pastor, Roquetes, Torre Baró, Gòtic, Trinitat Vella, Ciutat Meridiana, Trinitat Nova, Vallbona, Baró de Viver, El Besós, La Marina del Port, La Marina del Prat Vermell, Raval, Teixonera, and Sant Genís dels Agudells.
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And what new features does the new 2021-2024 plan bring? The main novelty is that the Barcelona City Council has included seven more neighborhoods in the Pla de Barris, so the program expands from 16 to 23 geographical areas. Thus, from now on, the 150 million will also be directed to Verdum, Can Paguera, Turó de la Peira, and La Prosperitat ---in the Nou Barris district---; El Carmel and Can Baró ---in Horta Guinardó---, and Poblesec, in the Sants-Montjuïc district. In addition, the new plan will address the entire Raval (Ciutat Vella), since in the first phase only the so-called Raval Sur was intervened. According to the consistory, these neighborhoods "also require an extraordinary intervention" after analyzing their unfavorable evolution.
The Barcelona City Council assures that in the 16 areas on which the 2017-2020 plan has focused, "a first trend of reduction of inequalities has begun to be observed," but all of them will continue to be part of this program, since the objectives are still far from being achieved. "These are long-term trends; more time is needed to reverse structural inequalities," explain municipal sources, who warn that these public policies of social surgery are now more necessary than ever as a consequence of the economic and health crisis caused by Covid-19. "We need this new Neighborhood Plan to face the impact that the health crisis will have on the entire city, but especially in these more vulnerable neighborhoods," they explain.
These are long-term trends; more time is needed to reverse structural inequalitiesThus, the new Neighborhood Plan has adapted to this new context and will introduce measures to to counteract the socioeconomic damage that the pandemic may cause. The challenge is that the crisis does not wipe out the progress that had been made. A priority objective, for example, will beto prevent the lack of economic resources from widening the digital dividein a context in which the massive use of new technologies for relating, studying, carrying out administrative procedures or teleworking has accelerated. Therefore, programs will be promoted to train citizens in ICT or to provide them with access to the necessary computer tools.
Of the 150 million invested between 2017 and 2020, 32.5 million have been allocated to education, 20.4 million to social rights, 16.7 million to housing, 14.1 million to employment and economic promotion, and 66.1 million to improving public spaces and accessibility. The new Pla de Barris is expanded with a new line of action: the implementation of programs that promote environmental sustainability and the fight against the climate emergency. For example, initiatives related to the energy efficiency of buildings, renewable energies, or new non-polluting forms of mobility will be implemented.
Within the framework of the Pla de Barris, the Barcelona City Council has also launched seven offices in recent months to help families process the various aid activated by public administrations to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.