Spurred by pandemic, Barcelona backs greener, car-free future
BARCELONA — When Spain lifted its strict pandemic lockdown in the middle of last year, residents of Barcelona found some of their streets were not as they remembered them.
The Consell de Cent, a broad street that runs through the city center, had lost two of its three car lanes to a widened sidewalk now painted yellow.
Originally described as provisional by city authorities, the changes are still in place a year later despite opposition from some business groups.
More is to come under a plan to convert 21 streets, totaling 33 kms (20 miles), into pedestrian green spaces.
The project illustrates how the pandemic has influenced urban planning across the world, accelerating changes such as more bike lanes and fewer cars amid growing concern about climate change.
Since March 2020, Barcelona has reclaimed around eight hectares of the cityscape from motor vehicles, transforming it into sidewalks, playgrounds, bike lanes or restaurant terraces, with authorities arguing that people need more space to avoid coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Along with Paris, which has also been creating more bike lanes, Barcelona has aggressively exploited the pandemic to embrace an urban overhaul.
The plan has attracted strong criticism from Foment del Treball, a regional business lobby, which says it could cost 50,000 jobs, in part because it makes it harder for delivery vans to park, while shops could lose out-of-town customers.
“We consider it a persecution of the private vehicle to remove it from the city without offering any alternative,” said the group’s deputy chair, Mar Alarcon.
However, Barcelona’s chief architect, Xavi Matilla, said the city had adapted well to fewer car lanes, while he believes more pedestrian space should boost local commerce.
Mr. Matilla said the health crisis had shown that if cities do not become greener, more people will leave, following those who have already moved to rural areas with better air quality and more outdoor space over the past year.
“The pandemic has functioned as a magnifying glass that has made us see that health should be one of the central aspects in the management and planning of the city,” he said, adding that Barcelona was discussing urban transformation initiatives with London and Paris.
In London, however, some pandemic traffic-reduction schemes have faced legal challenges or have been reversed.
Barcelona’s leftist municipal government aims to transform a third of all the streets in the Eixample district, famous for its Modernist buildings, into a so-called pedestrian green axis by 2030, completing the first four, among them Consell de Cent, by 2023.
EU THREAT
Although spurred by the pandemic, the push is environmentally driven as Spain’s second largest city seeks to improve air quality.
The European Commission asked the European Union’s (EU) top court to take action against Spain in 2019 after Madrid and Barcelona regularly exceeded legal limits on nitrogen dioxide, saying this could cause almost 9,000 premature deaths annually.
As the lockdown curbed traffic, all of Barcelona’s monitoring stations last year registered pollution levels below the EU limit for the first time, according to the city’s public health agency, which estimated this had prevented around 600 deaths and reduced new cases of asthma and lung cancer.
Last year, Barcelona banned the most polluting vehicles from the city, although in Madrid a similar scheme suffered a setback in the courts.
Luca Telloli, a member of the environmental group Eixample Respira, urged Barcelona to be even braver in curbing pollution as around 350,000 vehicles drive through the Eixample daily, and called for more open public discussion of its plans. —
Accommodation businesses have been able to pull through by chasing the “workcation” market, attracting people that want to do their remote work at tourist sites while lockdowns are declared in the major cities.
“Resorts are more flexible with the rates they’re giving out for workcations. Maybe they’re allotting more resources for that,” Mr. Clemente said.
One such company is Discovery World Corp., which runs luxury beach resorts and plans to integrate workspaces into its developments.
“We’re hopeful that as corporates come back to work, not everyone may go back to the 9-5, Monday to Friday work schedule and they may allow some flexible work to be done off site. And as a result of that, there would be more travelers who would be willing to work from resorts,” Discovery World Chief Executive Officer John Y. Tiu, Jr. said in an online video interview.
The Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Dr. Andrew L. Tan Center for Tourism expects the industry to keep plugging away with this approach, noting that Filipinos now view travel as a means to ease cabin fever and maintain good mental health.
“The ‘workcation’ model will persist as more employees become engaged in work-fromhome setups. Being stuck at home for a year and more, a lot of Filipinos still yearn for a new environment to work in or to stay in for a period of time, maiba lang ( just for a change of scene) as we put it,” AIM Research Manager Eylla Laire M. Gutierrez said in an e-mail.
If given the chance to go back in time, tourism business owners wish they had managed resources differently.
“The first thing I would do is take a good look at our organization and see where the excess expenses are. How can we trim the fat? How we can be more efficient in how we do our day-today business para ’di nasasayang ’yung pera (in order not to waste money)... be more watchful over the cash flow that you have (because) a lot of us were caught flat footed,” Mr. Clemente said.
“You’re anticipating other business to come in to cover all the payments that you need to make. A lot of us were caught in that dilemma. Since nakalabas lahat ng pera, nung nagsara lahat (Since all the money had been committed when everything shut down), our savings were not really enough to meet obligations, not only to clients for refunds, to our suppliers for payments we needed to make,
but (also for) basic things like utilities, rental.”
GREAT OUTDOORS
The tourism industry will be different because demand will be different. As travelers avoid crowded areas to steer away from public health risks, AIM’s Ms. Gutierrez said that less popular areas will have a chance to attract more interest.
“When we look at the future of tourism, the promotion of mass tourism will be considered passe. Tourist perceptions/behavior/ attitudes have changed because of the pandemic,” she said.
Ideally, she added, the pandemic should be treated as a time to invest in and fix tourist infrastructure found problematic or insufficient.
“On top of the usual infrastructure development projects such as roads and bridges, investments in medical facilities at tourist destinations must be made as well. Again, the new normal model integrates the value of health and safety at its core,” she said.
As the industry looks to diffuse travel, Mr. Clemente said that the country can be a choice destination for travelers if there is funding for infrastructure development in places like Dumaguete, Aurora, and La Union.
Discovery World’s Mr. Tiu said the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) should be expanded to address gaps in sewer infrastructure at tourist destinations.
“Maybe they can consolidate all that permitting and zoning under a more professionallyrun organization, rather than leaving it up to the LGUs (local government units) who… a lot of the time are also underfunded,” he said.
“Tourism just grew faster than expected in a lot of these areas, so it’s not the government’s fault. It’s a matter of speeding up the infrastructure and funding to the local areas.”
The Department of Tourism, according to Ms. Puyat, is preparing an infrastructure development plan for 2022 to 2028, which aims to improve destination management infrastructure, including sanitation, engineered landfill, healthcare facilities and emergency response systems.
The TIEZA, she said, is poised to “implement and oversee the construction of sustainable, resilient, and inclusive tourismrelated infrastructure in our local destinations.”