The time has come to discuss how we will return to the streets, the metropolitan area of Barcelona does not exist.
On paper, the department of Health of the Generalitat It has divided the territory where more than three million Catalans live – 43% of the population of Catalonia – into three different health regions. Metropolitana Nord, Sud and Barcelona. On this cracked map, the indicators that will allow a reopening of the large city must be evaluated.
In practice, only one
evaluation commission of the de-escalation with a city council, that of Barcelona. Important decisions will be made there.
For the moment, the rest of the mayors of the metropolitan cities have not been summoned or consulted. It is not an ideological question. Neither has he central government while it has had the absolute control of the crisis.
The Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), the institution that manages the common services of the 36 municipalities, administers one of the main public budgets, behind the Generalitat, the City Council of the Catalan capital and the Barcelona Provincial Council.
Thursday Quim Torra and the councilor of Salut, Alba Vergès, met with representatives of the local Catalan world. There were the three municipal associations, the four councils and a representative of the Barcelona City Council. The metropolitan area was again the great absentee.
The de-escalation will be local
Antonio Balmón, Mayor of Cornellà and vice president of the metropolitan area admits that “now comes the hardest part”. The administration of the public space that until a few weeks ago was almost empty.
How shops, theaters, parks come back to life … that responsibility falls essentially on the mayors, but it is especially complicated in the metropolitan urban continuum where density and mobility are the terrain where the virus that, it should be remembered, is still out there, it has spread with more intensity.
A spokesperson for the Salut department limited himself to specifying that the criteria for de-escalation will be “The same for all of Catalonia”.
But would it make sense that one side and the other of Riera Blanca street (the limit between l’Hospitalet and Barcelona) or on both sides of the Besòs river (the border between Barcelona and Santa Coloma) different decisions will be applied on how we should go out?
“No, that will not happen,” says the president of the AMB and the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau– It is evident that in the urban continuum there is a willingness to coordinate and I made this known to the Minister of Health in Salut when we met. And it’s not just about discussing how we go out into the street, we have to think about the future, about what this crisis has taught us and about the consequences that it will have ”.
Colau wants to promote a new Metropolitan Strategic Plan to think about the metropolis of 5 million inhabitants that reaches beyond its current territory to Sabadell or Terrassa with whose mayors it wants to meet soon.
“The area is an instrument for managing public services, for now it is not a government. This crisis has exposed our weaknesses ”.
But he admits that the current metropolitan administration cannot be asked for what it is not. “The area is an instrument for managing public services, for now it’s not a government. This crisis has exposed our weaknesses ”.
Barcelona opened its beaches last Friday. Sant Adrià, where the Barcelona coastline continues north, has never been closed except for the bathroom. In Badalona, further north, however, you could not walk on the sand until a week ago.
Makes sense? No. But this is how the Barcelona metropolitan area has been administered during the days when it became possible to go for a walk.
On the other side, in the LlobregatSomething similar has happened: there were municipalities where it was possible to walk along the river, in others, however, it was prohibited.
A person in charge of metropolitan facilities describes the situation: “it is chaos. Each city council does what it can, looking askance at the next door to see what it does.
Carme Ribasmanager Besòs Consortium Instead, he underlines that there have been good examples of collaboration: “Sant Adrià, Badalona and Santa Coloma shared their police forces. This is new and interesting. ”
As said, the metropolitan area does not exist and only Barcelona has a direct connection with the Generalitat thanks to Health, Education or Social Services consortiums that have been very effective in the crisis.
The strengths of these consortia may seem anecdotal but they are not: families from other municipalities in the area have obtained their food aid cards later than those in Barcelona. Not to mention the management of nursing homes, much faster and more effective in the Catalan capital. In other municipalities they have had to deal with their own means until someone in the Generalitat has picked up the phone.
A clear city
Antoni Poveda, vice president of mobility and transport of the Metropolitan Area and mayor of Sant Joan Despí It is categorical in stating that the AMB does not have the powers to act beyond waste management and public transport.
Next week the different municipalities will receive the metropolitan mobility agreement that will promote the use of sustainable individual transport; recovering the number of users of public transport, whose reduction in use is more than significant due to the risk of contagion, and the preservation of clean and healthy air. In this sense, it considers necessary a commitment to maintain initiatives such as
low emission zone.
All the mayors consulted agree on that purpose. “We cannot return to a city overwhelmed by pollution,” he says. Núria Parlon, the mayor of Santa Coloma.
Epidemiological studies of the Covid-19 they have established an unequivocal link between contamination and less resistance to the virus in the population.
Parlon believes that the pandemic has come to confirm some of the policies that were already being developed in the metropolitan area. One of them is policies to reduce pollution or improve specific routes for more sustainable travel. “These Projects They must continue, “warns the mayor, who believes that this crisis” has not opened our eyes, but it has confirmed that we were not wrong in what we were doing. “
The urban planner, professor of urban planning in Harvard and one of the drivers of Metropolitan Master Plan (PDU), Joan Busquets, considers that a metropolitan reflection is lacking and it is necessary to promote a commitment between the different municipalities. The urbanized Barcelona extends beyond its borders and reaches l’Hospitalet, Esplugues de Llobregat, Cornellà, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Badalona with neighborhoods with high density.
A density that Busquets defines as intermediate and proportional, allowing you to have proximity educational, health and cultural services.
This urban continuum is well defined by natural spaces where borders are even more indistinguishable, especially in these days of confusion and when it is not allowed to leave the municipalities.
Where is the limit on the Llobregat river paths between Sant Felíu, Sant Joan Despí and Cornellà? It is impossible for citizens to be clear. For this reason, Busquets advocates thinking big about a metropolis where there are spaces for all citizens. outside the territorial borders.
“You must look at the city in a dynamic way because it is constantly changing and it must be more comfortable from the point of view of mobility, housing and social life, observing with a magnifying glass and identifying opportunities.”
To be or not to be
The problem is that if the metropolitan administration has been so irrelevant in this crisis – even the deputations have had a more significant role – it is not certain that a pre-eminent place can later be sought in the debate on the future of the city and the world. emerged from the pandemic.
This week the Institut d’Economia de Barcelona Has published A study in which he highlights one of the effects of this crisis: citizens demand the exercise of authority. Andreu Arenas, one of its researchers, sums it up: “the lack of trust in cooperation between citizens leads them to look for a order authority, with the risk that he ends up asking for authoritarianism ”. The question is who can exercise it in the metropolis.
Núria Marín, mayor of l ‘Hospitalet and president of the Barcelona Provincial Council considers that perhaps the role of the AMB was not to act at first, but now the coordination of all administrations will be necessary and here the metropolitan government must play a vital role . Especially if a de-escalation at different speeds in the zone.
Lluïsa Moret, the mayor of Sant Boi recalls that in the 2008 crisis the metropolitan administration already assumed the management of the consequences of the crisis and was able to solve many problems for its citizens. “Our responsiveness is proven. And we can do it again. ”
Thursday of this week in a note Distributed by the metropolitan administration, it opened the way for the municipalities of the urban continuum to assume and share social competences that in theory are not part of their tasks.
Time will tell if that is just a declaration of good intentions.
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