The Generalitat is committed to changing urban planning regulations to allow the construction of multi-storey logistics warehouses, as a strategy to alleviate the lack of logistics land, said Ricard Font, Secretary General of the Departament de Polítiques Digitals i Territori, in an intervention in the SIL, the International Logistics Exhibition.
“In Catalonia we don’t have land near the ports of Barcelona and Tarragona, or near urban centers, as e-commerce operators need. That is why the logistical needs have to be covered from the regeneration of the existing buildings, growing in flight and adding a second floor”, assured Font.
The lack of land has become a serious problem for industry and distribution. Víctor Estrada, founding partner of the consulting firm Estrada
“The municipalities should modify the urban planning of the polygons, which should then be endorsed by the Generalitat, to allow construction in flight,” Estrada said. Specifically, he explains, the maximum heights of the warehouses and the maximum building volume of the plots would have to be modified. “It is essential to remove the current limitation that requires that in these cases there is only one operator,” says Estrada. This has meant that in Catalonia it has practically only opted for this Amazon model, in its warehouse in El Prat de Llobregat, in El Far, in the Empordà and in the center that it is building in the Bon Pastor neighborhood in Barcelona.
“The construction of these ships is much more expensive: they have to comply with more demanding fire regulations and they need much stronger structures,” explained Estrada. Multi-storey buildings have been in large Asian cities for years and have been introduced in the United States in the last decade, due to the demands of electronic commerce. “Prologis, in Seattle, has built a warehouse that allows trailers, with ramps, to go up to the upper floors,” she recalls.
Estrada assures that the sector is slowed down “because some municipalities still put obstacles in logistics, despite the fact that it is a sector that generates a lot of employment.” In his opinion, “it is essential that the administrations make a global approach to the needs of the territory”.
