"Not everyone should be able to live in Plaza Catalunya."

BarcelonaHousing is a problem that exists in our society: if you don't suffer from it, your children, your nephews, or your neighbors do. With this idea, the ARA and the Institute of Catalan Studies (IEC) sought to address one of the issues that most concerns citizens and for which governments are most in demand for answers and solutions. Housing: Technically feasible solutions. Is it time to build new cities from scratch? Solutions that, as geographer and IEC member Josep Vicent Boira and architect and IEC member Ferran Sagarra explain, must primarily involve moving away from a municipal urban planning perspective and instead begin finding solutions on a metropolitan scale. In an event moderated by ARA Deputy Director Carla Turró, the geographer and architect attempted to identify—but also rule out—possible solutions to the housing problem facing Catalonia, but also many other European countries.

Before proposing solutions, a thorough assessment of the situation is necessary. "The problem in Spain in general, and in Catalonia in particular, is that a rentier mentality has taken hold in the housing sector," Sagarra points out, highlighting the fact that "if you are a rentier, you pay fewer taxes and fewer contributions than if you own a business or are an employee." In this sense, the architect criticizes the fact that, at the moment, "the housing market is dominated by those who see it as a business and not a service." It is precisely for this reason that Boira insisted that "the market will never provide the solution" to the housing problem, as it is a "structural issue, much more complex than a temporary situation that depends solely on supply and demand."

Given this scenario, both experts warn that the solution cannot be solely based on building new housing; rather, since it is a structural problem, several variables must be taken into account. "Solving it by building new cities is very complicated. It's not just about creating housing, it's about creating jobs, transportation, and connections, and the difficult part: creating society and citizenship," Sagarra reiterated.

Is building a solution?

Now, although Sagarra and Boira rule out the option of building new cities, they are also unconvinced by current proposals for expanding existing ones. On several occasions, for large cities like Barcelona, ​​more imaginative housing solutions have been proposed, such as opting for vertical construction. That is, making existing buildings taller to expand the available housing stock. This option, Boira emphasizes, worked with Benidorm, which "is a city with a bad reputation, but is environmentally sustainable." However, Sagarra asserts that this is not a realistic solution for the Catalan capital: "If 200,000 new apartments were built in Barcelona, ​​the city would already be unbreathable. We must understand that not everyone should be able to live in Plaça Catalunya."

Given this inability to grow sustainably, the solution must be shared. "We must introduce the metropolitan ladder into solar management," Boira suggests. That is, not working so that each municipality resolves its own housing problems within its municipal boundaries, but rather that "the land dedicated to housing is shared." And in this shared management of habitable and buildable land, we must seek a strategy to decongest large cities and, although there are critical voices on the matter, accept that perhaps there are some towns that, as Sagarra points out, "will have to be densified."

"It's clear that low-density models are detrimental to the Mediterranean character and to our territory, which is why the low density of some developments should be limited," Boira agrees. In this sense, both speakers have raised the need to take touristification into account in this strategy, but they do not agree on how. "It lumps together tourist apartments and second homes, and it's important not to confuse these aspects," Boira argues. "It seems that the solution is to tax second homes, and that's not the case. If this type of policy is implemented, disaffection with democratic regimes will be even worse and will be a breeding ground for the middle class to shift to the far right," he warns. However, Sagarra is emphatic: "We must tax people who buy homes when they are not residents of a place. If you buy a house where you're not going to live, it must be more expensive."

Be that as it may, both Niebla and Sagarra have made it very clear that it is impossible to manage the housing problem without taking into account spatial segregation, inequalities, or what solutions are given to young people. In fact, they have pointed out how the latter and their families with young children are the ones most forced to flee large cities like Barcelona. For this reason, both have insisted on the need to implement a sound mobility policy. "We can't wait for people to move twenty kilometers from Barcelona if we don't resolve the mobility issue," the IEC architect reiterated.