Scenarios for a new Barcelona

A few days before the municipal elections, the events seeking to define the new Barcelona have multiplied. Barcelona Global, the cultural publication Hänsel* i Gretel* in its events held at the Alma hotel, the Chamber of Commerce, the Círculo Ecuestre or News Barcelona Post have opted to open the debate on Barcelona, beyond the political candidates for mayor. Some of the new scenarios for the new Barcelona that are emerging on the horizon are: the Marina del Prat managed by the Zona Franca Consortium, the culmination of the technological horizon of 22@, the cultural district of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, the reorganization of the Ciutadella park with a new management approach for the Barcelona Zoo, Montjuic mountain or the project for a new use of the Besós thermal power plant are some examples of the impulse that Barcelona will experience in the coming years.

One of the particularities of Barcelona's future development is that the city has already acquired new centers, such as Plaça Europa in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat and Plaça de les Glòries in Barcelona, which establish a city dynamic oriented outwards rather than inwards. Driven by these initiatives, the new Barcelona allows us to observe that the city will be metropolitan or it will not be, that projects such as the remodeling of La Rambla or the Diagonal tram are no longer key proposals that determine the new city and that it will be cultural or it will not be to the extent that it allows reconnecting Barcelona's potential as a symbolic and business space, as Miquel Molina well warns in his book Alerta Barcelona. Barcelona's new economic scenarios are conditioned by Barcelona's evolution in the next four years, in which it will play to maintain its vocation as a capital or see its growth limited.

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The proposal for Marina del Prat, which involves urbanizing 750,000 m2, equivalent to more than 40 blocks of Barcelona's Eixample, where a pilot space for young people where creativity defined the uses and its technological dimension is intended to be built, is a good example of how new scenarios are sought to be promoted. The cultural district deployed in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat announces that artistic poles of attraction between Barcelona and L'Hospitalet are essential to make creative projects sustainable, as they need new spaces to deploy their ideas. The idea of culminating the Montjuic Mountain space with Fira de Barcelona, the MNAC, the Miró Foundation, CaixaForum, Mies Van der Rohe's German pavilion will determine a cultural center capable of attracting international attention; a space that requires a strong public and private commitment to give meaning and direction to the necessary investments. The proposal to culminate 22@, which represents a kind of small La Défense, as a technological area, means that companies such as Mediapro, RBA, the Vila Casas Foundation or Pompeu Fabra University acquire more prominence when establishing the growth patterns of the area, including Plaça de les Glòries as a symbolic potential. The project to culminate the reuse of Ciutadella Park, closing the debate on the Barcelona Zoo, should allow rethinking one of the spaces that could become a new center of business and tourist activity. This idea is rightly suggested by Xavier Bru de Sala, who emphasizes the new uses that can be given to the many spaces available in Barcelona. Faced with these initiatives, it is necessary to put on the table the need to face the task of giving historical and economic meaning to the Besós Thermal Power Plant, which would allow the city's growth towards the Besós River and the Llobregat River.

All these projects that have been conceived, discussed, and that are now key for Barcelona from 2020 to 2030, must face and adapt to the changes caused by robotics, mobility demands, Barcelona's great pending subject, the commitment to sustainability and the knowledge economy. In the near future, large cities will be competitive if they manage to combine good climate, qualified professionals in the new economy, access to housing at competitive prices, social cohesion based on respect and tolerance, and the capacity to assume the social contract of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, which has already been approved by the UN General Assembly.

Barcelona's new growth scenarios seek the strength, sensitivity, and capacity of the public bodies of the Barcelona City Council, the Barcelona Provincial Council, the Generalitat government, the Spanish State, and the private sectors to advance and consolidate the city as the Great Barcelona so often proclaimed by all.