Mayor Jaume Collboni hopes to have the necessary support this autumn to review one of the most controversial measures of all those implemented during the previous term. This is the obligation to dedicate 30% of each promotion to social housing. The socialist already made it clear during the last electoral campaign. In his opinion, this initiative is not having the expected results, in reality it is discouraging private initiative. This Thursday, at the Barcelona, ??new stage conference, within the framework of a new edition of Foros de Vanguardia, in the MGS auditorium in Barcelona, ??the new mayor detailed his plans in this regard for the first time.
Collboni assured that what Barcelona needs to overcome its serious problems of access to housing is a large public-private investment that multiplies the offer. And to promote this great investment, it intends to “monetize” the controversial obligation in order to establish a public fund dedicated to the purchase of plots and also of buildings that allows increasing the public housing stock in the most consolidated parts of the city.
Collboni also assured that his initiative is not a simple occurrence at all, that he has already consulted, debated and discussed it with developers and builders, that the sector agrees with this reform. Actually, at least this was what the mayor implied, the last step is to gather the necessary political support to move it forward in the municipal plenary session.
The new mayor hopes to gather the support of both supporters of the original idea and its detractors. After all, who can be against a rule designed to alleviate one of the most serious hindrances in Barcelona. The problem is that right now the political climate in the city is a bit tense, both to the left and to the right of the mayor. So Collboni refused to indicate in which municipal plenary he plans to raise the issue. He entrusted everything to autumn, which is still quite a long way off. Let’s see if then the resentments are already lowered. The mayor also recalled that he had already signed the decree to declare Barcelona as a stressed housing market area.
Collboni also has the feeling that Barcelona has not had a voice or played the leading role that it deserves as a capital when it comes to facing crucial debates regarding large infrastructures. To reverse this situation, it will set up an infrastructure advisory council in which it intends to bring together engineers, urban planners, economists and experts in the field to help the municipal government establish the city’s position on the matter with an eye on the horizon of the year 2030. We are talking mainly about railway infrastructure, the port and the airport, but also issues such as energy, water, telecommunications and even data management. The mayor has already instructed the chief engineer, Oriol Altisench, to be in charge of choosing the professionals who can contribute the most to this new consulting forum.
“My commitment as mayor is to contribute to not losing more opportunities and that, when the mayor speaks, he speaks the good and best of the city and the country,” said Collboni. The infrastructure advisory council will join another veteran debate table related to the matter such as the Pact for Mobility, created in the time of Joan Clos, where in the last term there have been bitter debates between defenders and detractors of the tramway, bike lanes and low emission zones. Based on the contributions made by experts of different sensitivities, Collboni wants to show his “will to favor agreements for the development of infrastructures and unsynchronize stalled debates.” In this sense, he made clear his position in favor of the expansion of El Prat and all those projects that help “reconnect an international and internationalized city like Barcelona with the rest of the metropolitan area, Catalonia, Spain and the world”.
In addition to reconnecting, Collboni repeatedly used the concept of “reassessing”, attributable to all those projects that have generated controversy such as the Via Augusta bike lane and the shared bus-bike lane on Via Laietana. It can even be applied to the cleaning contract, which is not working as the new mayor would like and next week will bring together the concessionaires to try to face a summer that will see intense use of public space with cleaning guarantees.
What the new mayor has no doubt about is the union of the tramway along Diagonal, of which he reaffirmed his desire to complete the works connecting Trambesòs and Trambaix, although he acknowledges that he will have to seek the necessary political agreements in plenary , which precisely coincide with the progressive forces to which he constantly appeals to reach specific agreements that allow him to govern with guarantees. In this way, he starts a new stage in Barcelona municipal politics, that of pacts and agreements, to various bands. The dialogue will be more protagonist than ever.
