Between these two extremes is a careful balance, and it’s one Barcelona is currently trying to find for some of its oldest quarters. Referred to collectively as Ciutat Vella—Old City in Catalan—this intensely built, densely populated district at the city’s heart has been buckling under the pressure of intense exploitation by the tourist industry in recent years. In a pattern familiar to many inner cities, this pressure has displaced older businesses and the long-term residents who use them, while submitting residents who remain to a nightly barrage of street noise.
That’s why, starting this month, the city will carry out a “street by street, house by house” audit of the area’s 5,700 buildings to work out how Ciutat Vella’s different users, both permanent and temporary, can live in a little more harmony. To do so, the city will have to tackle three key problems. [...]
Ciutat Vella’s popularity with visitors doesn’t mean the whole place is in mint condition. In fact, some patches of the district are decidedly run down. Slip down alleys off La Rambla and you may be surprised to find crumbling buildings and empty plots. This dilapidation is not always an accident. Sellers can currently command far higher prices for empty buildings than occupied ones, because they offer a cleaner slate for investors who want to carry out luxury residential or retail conversions. Landlords can thus be tempted to leave property empty and encourage tenants’ departure through neglect in order to sell at a much higher price when the building is finally empty. In other cases, lenders have repossessed properties seized when occupants defaulted on loans, but then left the apartments untenanted after evicting the previous occupants. According to one recent count, there are 268 homes owned by lenders in Ciutat Vella currently without residents. [...]
These processes all seem positive, but will clearly require discretion. Tourist shops may look scrappy, but so do late night bodegas, cheap take out places, and numerous other businesses that form the not obviously photogenic backbone of a community. Barcelona seems keen to preserve its oldest quarters as genuinely livable, workaday neighborhoods that retain their current communities. Given the pressures on them, that will prove difficult. If they succeed, however, they will have created a guide which the rest of Europe can follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment