Many believe that urban planning is simply a branch of architecture that designs the growth of cities. Few people know that urban planning also involves economics, statistics, geography, and sociology. And almost no one knows that law is an essential component, incorporated to curb speculation. Two professors of administrative law, Manuel Ballbé Prunés and José Luis González Pérez, drafted the first modern urban planning law in 1956. The objective was to curb speculation on land surrounding cities, which was needed to meet the sudden demand for housing due to mass migration.
But little by little, urban planning law became corrupted, transforming from a tool designed to combat speculation into an instrument for fostering it: tailor-made rezoning to create hideous housing developments, to exponentially expand the supermarkets of a specific group, to allow football clubs to make a killing off land. Urban planning has been corrupted to the point of turning some city halls and departments into branches of developers and construction companies.
We are currently experiencing a second massive speculative wave, on the same scale as the one that swept through post-war Spain. This time, the impact on the right to housing stems from the actions of the real estate market in established cities. Today, existing housing stock must meet a massive demand from three different population segments: local residents, whom banks have largely shifted from the buying market to the rental market by denying them mortgages unless they have saved 20% of the property price; expatriates and digital nomads, who can work remotely thanks to the digital revolution and whose multinational corporations pay their seasonal rents without question; and finally, tourists, who, drawn to our cities, can now travel at low cost.
Faced with this massive demand, investors worldwide have seen a business opportunity in buying entire apartment buildings and offering them for rent to the highest-paying segment. Local residents lack the power to stabilize prices because the other two competitors are always willing to pay a higher price. Thus, the real estate market has effectively told the average resident that they must either allocate 74% of their salary to pay for ordinary housing or they have no place in their city unless they are willing to share it or live in a single room. The real estate market is dictating the urban planning model of our cities, filling them with increasingly wealthy people and emptying them of the middle and lower economic segments.
But, fortunately, today the second largest housing speculation wave in our history finds us with existing urban planning law that: a) establishes that the choice of urban planning model is "a non-negotiable public function that organizes and defines land use in accordance with the general interest"; b) requires that this planning model be "urbanistically sustainable"; and c) defines sustainable urban development as that which guarantees "social cohesion" and "prevents territorial sprawl." For 15 years, urban planning law has obligated the competent public administrations to act if this is not met, because it "grants the relevant administrative bodies the pertinent and necessary powers to [...] intervene in the real estate market," with the aim "of making effective the powers established in matters of urban planning, land protection, and housing."
Intervening in the real estate market does not mean prohibiting, but rather redirecting. To move from a situation of abnormality to one of constitutional and statutory normality. To guarantee that those who choose to live in the city they want can do so in dignified living conditions; to allow those who can invest in housing to obtain a reasonable return, guaranteeing that those who pay for it maintain their right to live in the city; to protect those who can buy a second home so that they can do so to enjoy it, but not to speculate with it; and to ensure that those who want to buy an apartment for their ascendants or descendants can do so.
A bill has recently been introduced in the Parliament of Catalonia that, from an urban planning perspective, attempts to harmonize the constitutional and statutory right to housing with the economic activity associated with housing, while subordinating it to the general interest, as mandated by the Constitution and the Statute of Autonomy. It consists of just seven articles that adapt the urban planning law to areas with a high-demand residential market, limiting: a) the acquisition of homes only to those who will live in them; b) the acquisition of entire buildings, with the obligation to dedicate all their units to the permanent rental of others at a market price typical of a high-demand area; c) the acquisition of second homes only for the personal use of the purchaser; and d) the acquisition of homes for second-degree relatives and first-degree relatives by marriage, with the possibility, while they wait, of supplementing their pensions by renting them out as permanent residences to others at a reasonable market price.
The proposal doesn't prohibit anything, but it does eliminate speculation by large investment funds and their intermediaries, who see housing only as a financial asset capable of offering double-digit returns—returns they can only achieve by violating the constitutional and statutory rights of millions of people, whom they ignore. These economic operators are operating outside the law due to their own inertia: their actions have always been contrary to the legal system. The only thing that changes is urban planning, which is brought back into compliance with the constitutional and statutory framework, which years ago determined that rampant speculation has no place in our cities. Making this a reality now rests solely in the hands of politicians, and Generation Z is watching closely.
