The debate on the future of Barcelona lacks a healthy dose of self-criticism on the part of its traditional leaders. The use of space, especially the urban one, as a source of positive and almost free externalities has meant that the productive vocation of the city and of Catalonia has led to brick and mortar and tourism, which for decades have been the way many They have made quick and easy money, including those who have sold the family business. Now, the political reaction to those who have used Barcelona to do business is on the way to being just as disastrous: an isolated look that only attends to the supposed welfare and tranquility needs of a segment of Barcelona, who must live from heaven or , soon, of the guaranteed minimum income.
The issue of the extension of the tram has been the last sample of the Barcelona that only thinks of itself, that tries to centrifuge everything that bothers it, from the vehicles of those who go to work from the metropolitan area to the tourists who disturb its tranquility. Before, it had been polluting factories, barracks and large urban services that were thrown into the periphery.
This gazing at the navel is highly conditioned because the mayoralty of Barcelona, the true royal power, is only voted for by the residents of the central city and not by the metropolitan citizens who use the city and are often native and feel it as much theirs as those who plus. But although the institutional architecture makes this long look difficult, the leadership of Barcelona over the area and the metropolitan region, and over the whole of Catalonia, depends on the generosity and broad-mindedness of the capital. Because its problems – scarcity and scarcity of land, lack of affordable housing, congestion and pollution … – will only be solved with the rest of the territory.
Instead of worrying about extending the underused section of the Besòs tram to Verdaguer, Barcelona should have put all its strength to direct the extension of the line to the opposite end, through Barcelonès Nord. For example, taking advantage of the remodeling under study of the C-31 in Badalona to incorporate the tram and make it reach the neighborhoods of La Morera and Manzanar on the way to the Can Ruti service center and the Gutmann Institute. This is how effective leadership and real capital are built. Or accepting that the expansion of the Clinic can be carried out outside the city walls, in the new Eixample, which has to be the metropolitan area and region. There is no other way to try to generate some 1,500 affordable accommodations in the city. Barcelona has to renounce complacency and gallinaceous flight and bet on the only possible Barcelona, that of Catalunya city.
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