Carles Llop: "The urban world must understand that the countryside is not just a place to rest."

LleidaCarles Llop, PhD in architecture (Lleida, 1958), is the human embodiment of the long-awaited fusion of city and countryside. He is a member of the Department of Urban Planning at the Polytechnic University of Barcelona (which he directed for seven years) and, together with the architects Sebastià Jornet and Joan Enric Pastor, has received multiple awards for numerous urban transformation plans (such as that of the Mina neighborhood in Sant Adrià de Besòs). At the same time, he has also been responsible for territorial planning projects and a large number of landscape intervention projects. His latest project has been the publication of a collective book by the Horitzons 2050 Private Foundation entitled Let's mobilize! Rural world! New ruralities for historic territories (Fonoll Publishing).

This title, which is that ofa seminar held two years ago, it sounds like an agonizing call to me.

The title is that of a manifesto and, as such, it aims for things to be as we believe they should be.

Well, it seems like the vindication of a new rurality that has not been achieved.

It's not a do-gooder manifesto, but an optimistic one, seeking to collaborate with the great heroes and patriots who care for the land and live there. But it's also a call to everyone, an invitation to dissolve the atavistic distinction between rural and urban worlds, in favor of the idea of a mosaic city.

What is this mosaic city?

Whether we're from the city or the countryside, we live in a shared territory, and we increasingly need to share it. As archaeologist Carme Miró said, we mustn't forget that when we scratch the soil of Barcelona city, we see vineyards dating back to the Roman era. The rural undercurrent is always present in cities.

But the use of admiration in the title makes me think we're already late.

Territorial transformations can never be planned a few years in advance. They are more like long-distance races. It's never too late to do something. We are who we are and in the moment we live. Therefore, contemporary times should not be nostalgic for something lost.

What are the priorities?

It's clear that the most vulnerable areas are often in the cities themselves, on the outskirts, where poverty and energy and social insecurity are evident. But this also occurs in the so-called rural world. This is also true of the fact that many municipalities with fewer than 500 inhabitants continue to suffer from basic deficits, lack comprehensive digitalization, or face serious problems with access to housing.

Do we, then, have an unbalanced demographic reality? Is Barcelona really too big a capital for such a small country?

The imbalance in population distribution in Catalonia is a mantra that's repeated a great deal. Population density is an important factor, but not a determining factor.

Oh, no?

Economic income, the ability to access health services, culture… The ability to have basic services, such as schools and cultural exchange, close at hand, in distance and time, is as important as, if not more so than, population density. Access to mobility—both of people and transportation, goods and services, information and knowledge, otherness, culture, and also the possibilities of access to metabolic flows, to the quality of life provided by air quality, water, and land management… These are all increasingly extreme rights.

Does the city-country dichotomy still exist?

Unfortunately, yes. There is a great lack of understanding of the interior territories. They have lost their DNA, their historical identity. The rural world needs to be regenerated.

In what sense?

The values of agriculture, livestock, and agroforestry are unknown or treated with a certain nostalgia and even exoticism. These values must remain alive. Rurality must continue to be about agricultural, livestock, and forestry production. But to achieve this, we must count on the cities, on people from the urban world, and we must foster exchanges. They can't just go to the countryside for a few days of rest; they must also foster work.

How is it done?

Well, by financing and compensating for those activities that are not, from an economic point of view, as profitable as those in urban agglomeration economies.

Finance them from the city, of course.

Thought, economics, decision-making forces, and powers are often found in the city. And this sometimes provokes an adverse reaction from the people of the region. "What should people from outside come to tell us?" I remember that classic expression from Pallars that says, "A good tree never rises without water." It stems from that reluctance to understand that newcomers are also important. We must live together, sharing the rural and urban worlds.

I feel like there are underutilized lessons from recent history, such as the pandemic and the last major power outage, that have underscored the need to balance the landscape. Aren't we learning?

I would phrase it differently. We mustn't forget all those accidents that somehow teach us that we can live differently. We can't let our guard down, and that's why we need a lot of activism and hard work.

What actions are you thinking of?

We must fundamentally encourage young people to remain in the rural world without leaving the urban world. Cohabitation between their places of origin and cities is necessary. We live in contemporary terms of variable geometry. The value of the territory is not being born, living, and dying in one place. Somehow, we must have the capacity to coexist, according to our needs and the moment of our life, in different areas of the territory.

Could this mobility pose the risk that only the wealthiest classes can afford it? Could the new rural areas be elitist?

Yes. That danger exists. If we give too much prestige to the rural world out of elitist desire, what we're ultimately losing is the possibility of equity and sociability in both the rural and urban worlds. Freedom must be fostered, but so must the right to universal accessibility.

And again, how?

An example. If the inland train, the one on the Manresa line, were much more modern, if we could quickly reach Mollerussa from Igualada, we would connect the region, reduce distances, and expand our service radius.

AND?

The structuring of the territory allows for universal, collective, broad, and communal freedom, beyond favoring elites. Just as we have neighborhood laws, we can have micro-village laws. There are specific benefits for living in villages so that the housing problem disappears.

We can understand that you, an urban architect concerned with new ruralities, are an example that this new world is possible.

In it UPC Research Group We're working hard to ensure that urban planning departments, which have traditionally been only interested in development and growth, are now more interested in this mutualization between the countryside and the city. And we're working along these lines from the academic world, researching, analyzing, studying, and also disseminating in one way or another.