What do we do with the empty industrial estates in Catalonia?

Black and white photographs of cities are always well received, while future plans tend to generate rejection. We urban planners have to live with this, but I don't give up believing in the transformative potential of cities, and to do so, I'll use the example of the Poblenou neighborhood. When I was studying architecture (in the 2000s), most of the urban ideas that have governed this neighborhood were being conceived. Now I walk around quite often and admire the architectural quality of what has been restored on a heritage scale and also what has been newly built. Recently, I discovered a building under construction by Jordi Badia on the corner of Llull and Badajoz that has me amazed. It looks like a volume sculpted by the 1916 regulation of New York, a close cousin of the renders by Hugh Ferris on pyramidal skyscrapers, with terraces facing the midday sun that make you stop and contemplate it.

The objective of the initial 22@ plan was to renovate the industrial land to create a "modern economic activity district" with a significant presence of emerging activities in the new ICT, cultural, and knowledge sectors. It must be acknowledged that, at the corporate level, large companies have established themselves. Perhaps more local and less international than the plan envisioned, but in retrospect, the local response has been a success, with the Diagonal line filled with office towers and also social housing. The economic investment the project has attracted is remarkable, despite the fact that companies lacked carte blanche to create their own language like Canary Wharf or La Défense, but had to maintain very specific street alignments, heights, and passageways.

"This book is the product of my curiosity about why some cities grow while others stagnate and degenerate." Thus begins one of Jane Jacobs's classic books on urban economics. Jacobs argues that the urban economy expands by opening up to new ways of working, not just by increasing production. She describes innovation on an urban scale as a condition similar to the logic or intuition of artists, who are always creating anew, otherwise they disappear. And she explains why urban planners were already failing in 1970 when they tried to classify activities; it is very difficult for a company to manufacture the same product or provide the same service for many years. Activity categories cease to make sense when companies that traditionally sold T-shirts now furnish cafeterias or the headquarters of telecommunications companies now provide advanced healthcare services (highly dependent on technology). Plans can, at most, provide guidance, but in no way predict how we will earn a living ten years from now. But Jacobs and other thinkers have also described how cities are also valuable for their inefficiency and unpredictability: there's no need to limit absolutely everything!

In a context where one-third of Barcelona's citizens were born outside of Spain, it is necessary to vindicate the Innovation District's capacity to also embrace individual innovation, not just corporate innovation, to facilitate the implementation of small-scale economic activity. It is well established that entrepreneurship comes precisely from those who lack the opportunity to enter the fold of large operators. If there is no room for less formal, perhaps unknown, activities, there is a danger of fossilizing the district's activity exclusively with large corporations. expats (who are as much migrants as the rest), tend to create a demand for services with an exquisite design, but how can we encourage the mixing with residents of Sant Martí or the Southeast of Besòs? The García Márquez Library is, in that sense, a good mechanism to encourage mixing. But, do the expats, do they use it?

The transformation of 22@ is an example of the regeneration of what any industrial fabric of a medium-sized city in Catalonia can be. Everywhere there are empty industrial estates or those with excessively large plot sizes. Cities have the opportunity to draft next-generation regulations: simple, clear, and highly flexible, so that anyone can start a customized project, helping to create a solid, diversified urban economy. For this to be possible outside of Barcelona, ​​no one can ignore it: municipalities must think collaboratively; imposing, limiting, and restricting are goals deeply rooted in bygone eras. Costs will have to be reduced in street development, and overlapping high-rise uses will have to be allowed. Subsidized housing can coexist perfectly above an organic supermarket and a veterinary products warehouse. A car dealership can perfectly have offices or mechanical workshops above it. A Lebanese bakery can be located on any busy corner. The best thing about our discipline is that you can learn without having to lock yourself away in a laboratory; Without the Year 2000 Plan, Poblenou would likely still be black and white, as in the photographs. The key is also to allow for greater vitality in the future.