'Outlet' City

I have a certain tendency to avoid establishments called outlets, whether they are for clothes or furniture or any type of product. I believe the reason is the overcrowding of products and the massification I find in these stores. The level of information I receive is so great that I get confused and don't know where to start looking.

Sometimes that same feeling has happened to me when visiting a city. I'm not talking about cities with markets full of stalls and people buying and selling. I'm referring to cities that have overdone it with accessory elements that, instead of informing or becoming gratifying, in my opinion, produce the opposite effect.

Why do some cities maintain harmony?

In an outlet you find a mix of different collections and products from several seasons. The same happens in a city. The city is built over years, over centuries! A developing neighborhood can take between 15 and 20 years to consolidate, and each phase of development and renovation responds to different social and civic needs. Just as the designers of clothing collections change, so do city designers, civic needs, and government teams. What a great difficulty for planners to maintain coherence!

This leads me to wonder, how then do we build a city without getting a disconnected result? I will explain it very briefly and with four statements.

Firstly, by following the city's master plan. In urban planning, we would talk about the city's general plan or the metropolitan general plan, but it is not only this document that determines the final result of the different interventions. The general plan determines the urban parameters, but it does not speak of aesthetics, beauty, heritage or historical value, memory, in short. How do cities then manage to maintain this coherent line in their planning? Through measures to protect architectural heritage such as the Catalog of Assets. The first Heritage catalog of the city of Barcelona, for example, was approved in 1962. (Catalog of buildings and monuments of Artistic, Historical, Archaeological and typical or traditional interest with the category of partial plan. Source: Barcelona City Council).

Secondly, with the awareness of the citizenry. If we continue with the example of the city of Barcelona, in the 80s, significant public concern and awareness arose around the protection of emblematic buildings and specifically in relation to a building I know very well: Can Serra, the headquarters of the Barcelona Provincial Council on Rambla Catalunya. The Can Serra Building is a neo-Gothic palace built by the architect Puig i Cadafalch that ran the risk of disappearing under Franco's "developmentalism" and, thanks to popular mobilization and the action of professional bodies, it was preserved. In 1993, the Generalitat approved Law 9/1993 on Catalan Cultural Heritage, and many cities, starting in the 2000s, approved special plans for heritage protection.

Thirdly, less is more. The intervention of architects Federico Correa and Alfons Milà in the Can Serra building brought, from my point of view, through a linear and sober design, the necessary modernity and transparency to the Avenida Diagonal facade and respected Puig i Cadafalch's work with the preservation of the facades on Rambla Catalunya and Còrsega street. This is an example of an intervention not free of controversy, but one that fits into the city's master plan and with the objectives sought: the protection of architectural heritage, the needs of users, and the will of the citizens.

Finally, back to basics. There is no need to ornament in vain. This is the function of a city's Architecture Commission. To analyze the urban model and the impacts of new buildings and new developments without losing the essence that characterizes us and makes us unique in the world, the Pla Cerdà.