London urban planner Greg Clark, an expert in advising cities in crisis (he has worked on 300 throughout his career), has a curious way of referring to cities that rest on their laurels when the wind blows too long in their favor. : he calls them “lazy citiesâ€.
There are very obvious examples throughout history, such as Detroit, which was the motor capital and which, for not having diversified its economy, collapsed at the same time as the automobile industry. Manchester, Milan or New York also lived their dark times.
It is suggestive to ask whether Madrid or Barcelona can be associated with the qualifier “lazy”, although the result will probably serve to raise new questions, rather than provide conclusive answers.
Undoubtedly, if there is a city immersed in an expansive cycle and, consequently, susceptible to becoming lazy one day, that is the capital of Spain. Madrid today leads all the rankings of excellence. It has snatched from Barcelona/Catalonia (perhaps forever) the primacy in GDP; attracts more foreign investment than anyone; places its museums at the top of the list in The Art Newspaper every year; enjoy one of the most vibrant nights on the continent and, as if that were not enough, one of its teams, Real Madrid, tours Europe with the aura of being unbeatable.
In this Madrid whose dynamism no one disputes, the debate on the future model is episodic, something, on the other hand, common in the capitals that concentrate political and financial power. Why wonder what they want to be, if they already are? However, if one day this reflection were truly opened, deficiencies would emerge that in the future could reduce its potential.
Madrid expands freely, outside the current trends in European urban planning, based on promoting greater social cohesion based on the idea of ​​the city of cities. And that has its advantages and disadvantages. In the scheme of metropolises that are built from a central nucleus that concentrates a large part of the wealth, growth is easy, but inequalities are more accentuated. In fact, the Community of Madrid is now at the bottom of Spain in balance between the richest and the poorest.
Public transport languishes and the bicycle does not take off (the city is also among the least attractive for the bike, according to the OCU). The urban model of the 20th century is not really questioned. Little has remained of that green Welcome Mr. Marshall that the local authorities orchestrated in 2019, when they hosted COP 25. Greta Thunberg left and the dioxide returned. It’s not a good letter of introduction to the volatile community of talent, always pro-fun but also attentive to the policies that make a city a healthy home.
More. Madrid’s cultural offer is diverse and generous. It has it all: from the mainstream to the most alternative. The PP City Council itself hosts, at its headquarters, critical and irreverent exhibitions, such as the one dedicated to the Barcelona underground. But the recent dismantling of the Medialab Prado in its collaborative aspect (it was a citizen laboratory operated by the citizens themselves) to replace it with conventional exhibition halls (without great public success, by the way) is a worrying sign. The city of platforms with this collaborative profile is not enough.
Of course, the risk that Madrid runs of stagnating is relative. The capital also knows how to reinvent itself and power, money, creativity and determination – of which there is plenty – help it to get on trains that seemed to pass by.
Barcelona’s is another story. Asleep in the post-Olympic nap, she was shaken like no one else by the successive global crises. But, especially, due to a political conflict that stripped it of thousands of companies and accentuated the feeling of economic precariousness. It was a bad awakening from the dream of the 90s. Because of all this –and thanks to all of this– he has been obsessively searching for the model of the city that will ensure his future.
That is why urban debate think tanks sprout up in Barcelona. Reputational successes or failures, such as a laudatory editorial or critical article in the international press, prompt heated discussion. And an ambitious congress is set up for three years, the React, which is a storm of ideas to get the bear out of lethargy. Something unusual in other cities.
One of the regulars of this cycle, the urban planner Clark, writes the epilogue of the collective book reBarcelona, ​​rethinking the city to come, coordinated by Sara Sans, in which he maintains that history, by denying it the benefits of being a capital that Madrid does have, has forced Barcelona to be a “restless” city, “with solutions” and to a certain extent “excited”.
But the qualifier that repeats the most is that of intentional. In his opinion, Barcelona has always set objectives that have served to project itself beyond its status as a relatively small city and forced to exercise soft power, in the absence of power tools. And now, in the complex scenario that lies ahead, his intention, he affirms, must be to become a permanent laboratory for new forms of urban life. That is, to base (even more) on innovation its commitment to continue growing. Now he just needs to act boldly to achieve it.
It is in the process of determining which are the weaknesses that Madrid and Barcelona must overcome in order to excel that those traits that make them so complementary emerge naturally. Features that invite us to explore greater cooperation between the two, although in general we are lazy to admit it.
