"I don't miss Barcelona": the pandemic is increasing the desire to leave the city

BarcelonaIt was an idea that often danced in her head but due to fear and work incompatibilities had been kept in the pending adventures drawer. The covid gave her the definitive impulse to leave Barcelona and try what it is like to live in a house away from the city. First, in Ripollès, and now in a community project in a farmhouse in Vallès Oriental, between Cardedeu and La Garriga: a house that she shares with five other people, with spaces for each of them and others to create community life, such as the garden or coworking spaces. Diana Mateo, who is a graphic designer and is 30 years old, is one of the thousands of Barcelonians who have been convinced by the pandemic and the possibility of working from home to exile from the big city and try living in more relaxed environments and, above all, with more free space and greenery. Places where housing - and life in general - is more affordable: a study by the Institut de Estudis Regionals i Metropolitans de Barcelona (Institute for Regional and Metropolitan Barcelona Studies) (IERMB) shows that the cost of living in Barcelona is 13.3% higher than the average in Catalonia. And this, now that the restrictions have eliminated much of the proposals offered by the city and social life, weighs more noticeably. "It was time to give it a try", sums up Diana.

She first left with doubts, for a season that she didn't know if it would be short: "You leave Barcelona and you don't know what will happen, if you'll find what you're looking for or if you'll miss what you had". But now she confesses that she has no intention of taking a step back: "I don't miss Barcelona". She has discovered a different perception of time: "Here everything goes by more slowly: I have time to do things I like, like working in the vegetable garden or doing artistic activities". And all of this, she points out, at a price that would be impossible in Barcelona: "You gain in quality of life". What she does think she will miss is the city's cultural offer, but with so many restrictions, she says she hasn't noticed this yet. It's only been seven months since she changed her life.

Joan Oller, 36, and his partner are also convinced that, in the short term, they will not return to Barcelona. The city expelled them when they started looking at flats to buy after their rent was raised, and the pandemic finally convinced them. In December they bought a flat in Sabadell and, although they confess that they were very much in love with the life they had in Barcelona, they say that they are "very comfortable" in the city that has welcomed them: "For the price for which we now have a flat that we really like, we could only have afforded a hole in Barcelona".

Many other Barcelonians have taken advantage of the health context to convert what was their holiday home into their habitual residence and move to beach towns such as Altafulla - where last year there were 115 more new residents than the previous year - or mountain towns such as Bellver de Cerdanya - which has seen its population increase by some 180 residents. Others have moved to residential towns, but on a smaller scale. Barcelona City Council has detected an "atypical" flow of residents from the city to these types of towns. It calculates, based on the municipal census, that between January and October last year the city lost 13,094 inhabitants, a figure that has to take into account the slowdown in immigration, which until now compensated for the outflows from the city and resulted in a positive migratory balance. In the context of the pandemic, the flow of departures grew by 8% and arrivals plummeted by 43.7%.

This week, the municipal services survey carried out by the city council confirmed with data this certain urban disenchantment in the context of the pandemic: 30% of Barcelonans now say they would leave the city if they could afford it, a percentage double that of four years ago. And the city, despite maintaining a B, gets its worst mark in terms of satisfaction with living in it: 7.3.

The key, however, warned the alderman of Presidency of the City Council, Jordi Martí, will be to see if this trend is linked to the pandemic, to restrictions such as not being able to go out on weekends, or if it has come to stay; that is to say: to delimit how many changes of standard are strategic to be able to live better in times of restrictions and how many are vital decisions. The council understands that now many Barcelonians have moved to cities that are a short distance from Barcelona - half an hour or forty minutes away - and that, in practice, they sleep outside the city but continue to live there. They take the city with them, in the words of Martí, who does not perceive a change in the "urbanite" ways of life. No threat to cities.

"This model of suburban growth is not sustainable, it is incompatible with the fight against climate change", warns the urban planner Maria Buhigas, who was an ERC councillor in Barcelona. She argues that the option of choosing to take the whole package of living outside can help to repopulate empty Catalonia, but that the option of living in one place and continuing to use all the services of the compact city is not sustainable: "If the flight is to rebalance the municipalities of empty Catalonia, no problem. If it is for a second wave of suburbanisation, we have to be careful".

From the richest neighbourhoods

Buhigas asks, in any case, to analyse the data carefully before rushing headlines and to be clear that those who leave in the current context are those who can afford to do so: because of their economic and employment situation. In fact, the City Council's study on population flows already shows that the neighbourhoods from which most residents are leaving for other Catalan municipalities are those with the highest incomes, such as Pedralbes, Tres Torres and Diagonal Mar. And the municipal services survey showed peaks of satisfaction with living in Barcelona in popular areas such as the northern neighbourhoods of Nou Barris. "The city still represents opportunities", says Buhigas, convinced that the urban model is not in crisis. She predicts that many of those who have left or now say they would leave will return when the city recovers its pulse and bars and theatres reopen, but she asks to take advantage of the moment to make two reflections: the need to improve housing, especially in the most vulnerable neighbourhoods, and to rethink attraction policies in smaller municipalities.

Lola Sánchez, a lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Barcelona, also calls for caution in the analyses, because there is still no reliable data available and because the trends that have been noted could disappear when the restrictions come to an end. If now the people of Barcelona respond that they are more willing to leave, she points out, it may be because in the context of pandemic urban agglomerations are associated with risk. But this could change when people lose their fear of public transport, for example, and also if the option of working from home comes to an end. Barcelona has been sending residents to nearby towns for years, for example to Maresme or Vallès, but until now this has been compensated for by the arrival of foreigners. Sánchez agrees with Buhigas that the risk would be to make the "urban" stain grow: dispersion. A reality that she does not believe will come to pass once living and working conditions normalise, nor does she believe that the covid crisis will end up having an effect on the afforestation of areas that are now empty.

"Any reconfiguration of the metropolitan region linked to the movements that are taking place seems unlikely, but this does not mean that there cannot be some impact on the receiving municipalities", defends Antonio López Gay, from the Centre de Estudis Demogràfics (Demographic Studies Centre) and the Department of Geography at the UAB. He points out that the details of the municipal survey show that the people who most say they would leave the city are families with children, who are very affected by home lockdown, and that in the last two years there has been an increase in the percentage of Barcelonans who said they would leave the city if they could, probably because of the price of housing. "I find it hard to believe that Barcelona is emptying. It's like when you're looking for a parking space: when one car leaves, another one arrives, the flows will gradually normalise", he predicts.

The possibility of more space

"What the pandemic has done is to show many people in Barcelona that change is possible, that it is possible to live outside Barcelona. Especially after the hell that home lockdown in a flat meant for many people", says the urban planner Andreu Ulied, who thinks the percentage of 30% of Barcelonians who would now change their place of residence is low. "Many have seen the difference of being able to live with more space, without so much background noise and with green spaces", he adds, and assures that the city's way of "seducing" people who now have doubts about whether it is worth continuing to live there is to accelerate the transformations to gain more peaceful spaces, with less traffic and more space to breathe. In short, to close the gap that now separates it from less dense environments.

The drowning of the middle class

"I have suspected for months that this trend would increase", predicted the sociologist Emma Pivetta, who teaches at the EU Business School, when the architect Maria Sisternas announced that the pandemic had made her decide to change Barcelona for Girona: Sisternas denied that the compact city was in itself more sustainable than the more peripheral environments and placed the core of the issue in each person's way of life. Now, with the first figures that already confirm these population movements, Pivetta warns that we will have to be attentive to situations such as the necessary increase of services in small towns that now receive more neighbours and the consequences that this may entail and, also, we will have to see what happens with housing in Barcelona: who gets the flats that the people of Barcelona release - if they get to release them - and what impact this has on prices.

The sociologist points to the "drowning of the middle classes" as a key point to explain this certain disenchantment with the city: people who feel that they are paying too high a price to live in Barcelona and who are beginning to think that it is not worth it, and that they would live better outside of the city.

A repeated pattern

The flight from the city in the midst of the health crisis is not unique to Catalonia. When presenting the data that demonstrate this trend, the City Council added others that show that these flows are repeated in other European and North American cities. The estimate made by Mymove7 (February 2021), based on the analysis of changes of address of the United States Postal Service, showed, for example, that almost 16 million people requested a change of address during 2020 (4% more than in 2019), 27% from February to July. New York lost the most population: more than 110,000 residents left between February and July 2020. And the trend has been repeated in Europe: Milan, for example, is estimated to have lost 12,000 residents and, in contrast, in the south of the country there are signs of population growth. The key will be to see whether these trends are cyclical or structural. If they leave with the covid, or they stay.