Greg Clark: "Barcelona and Madrid have to compete together against other city systems"

Greg Clark usually begins his talks by clarifying that he is not the same Greg Clark who was Conservative Cities Minister, although he wrote a book about him. Nor did the president of the English Football Association, who had to resign for using inappropriate language in an interview. This Greg Clark (Wimbledon, 1962) is an urban planner who for more than forty years has advised more than 300 cities that needed improvement. Among them, Barcelona. La Vanguardia interviews him during his participation this weekend at the Hay Festival Forum in Seville.

Have you ever felt like a city doctor, when your help has been requested in a crisis situation?

I would never consider myself a doctor of cities because, although having attended more than 300 cities provides you with a kind of map of the world, I am not specialized in cities like a doctor is in his field. But there is something interesting about the ability to distinguish the particular illness of some cities from the general illnesses of cities as a whole. Almost all cities need some type of antibiotic, but each city also requires its particular cell therapy. I’m not an emergency room doctor, but I admit that I enjoy going to cities that face big challenges.

Barcelona and this city we are in, Seville, face them. Related to the climate crisis. One suffers from a prolonged drought and the other from very high temperatures all year round. What would you advise them?

They are key challenges. Yes they can do something. To begin with, they are more advanced than national governments when it comes to regulating carbon emissions. We must create clean, connected and compact cities. I’m talking about well-designed cities with quality architecture and that have multiple centers but that are not spread throughout the territory, because that triggers trips by private vehicle. They must have other centers located next to public transport stations, to limit travel. But of course we have to recognize that cities are victims of climate change and therefore we need to have resilience and adaptation strategies, such as decarbonizing, but also creating deliberate shading and using materials that absorb heat rather than reflect it.

What do you think the second half of the century of cities will be like? Who do you think should take the lead?

The first thing to do is recognize that the urbanization of the world is not an option. No alternative. The challenge is how to achieve good urbanization. This urbanization has to be planned before the challenges of growth arise. We have to get ahead of the housing problems, how to manage tourism, gentrification… every time I come to Spain, people pose these challenges to me: “Oh, yes, tourism, which makes houses unaffordable.” , which gentrifies…” Well, all of that is the consequence of not having planned in advance for there to be more housing. We have to start thinking about Barcelona and Madrid as metropolitan areas of ten million people and start planning accordingly.

And leadership?

Leadership should not correspond only to the mayor, but he has to form a team with cultural institutions, universities, airports, ports…

Let’s get to the bottom of the matter. Often, when investing in improvements in city centers, the place becomes the focus of tourism and investors, and residents are expelled to the suburbs. To do?

Let’s see, I understand people who say that their neighborhood has become more attractive and that is why they have been expelled. To me, on the other hand, it seems to me that we must invest in the cultural and creative life of our cities. They are there for that. Our cities can only provide that unique identity, that sense of belonging, if they truly explore their DNA and create unique cultural experiences. And if that makes our cities more attractive to tourists and investors, we shouldn’t be surprised. We should plan for success, not failure.

Is that possible?

Yes. If we build a successful city center that has this cultural offer, I think it is very important that we become tourists of our own cities. But not only as “visitors”. We should be enthusiastic consumers of the creative productivity of our cities. That will only push people towards the suburbs in an unwanted way if we do not have a proper long-term housing strategy, with the construction of more housing and more diverse housing, with different price brackets. There is the problem. In Europe we believed that housing policy would provide enough homes for the population as it grew. We were wrong. The housing market is not providing enough homes as the population grows. We need different housing strategies. If those housing strategies work, there is no reason why people should be forced to live where they don’t want to.

We already talked about tourism. Concern about the effects of mass tourism is spreading. What do you think of the measures to limit it? In Seville, for example, the City Council is considering charging to access the Plaza de España.

To begin, I ask you a counter question. Name me a successful city anywhere in the world that doesn’t have a strong tourist economy. Paris, London, Amsterdam, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, San Francisco… all have strong tourist economies. So a strong tourism economy is not an indicator of a weakness or a problem. Tourism actually produces many strategic benefits for cities. High levels of connectivity, diversification of the population base, increase in clients for cultural assets… In short, more clients, more resources, more connectivity and more people willing to co-finance the city’s cultural and heritage product. But, if you are not prepared for the level of tourism you are going to receive, you will quickly find yourself saturated.

That’s where the saturation begins.

The key concept is load capacity. If you are going to bring in more users you must increase the carrying capacity, otherwise all that happens is that you raise the price and decrease the quality. This means you have to know which tourists you want and which ones you don’t want. And you must create a marketing campaign, in coalition with hotels, airlines, tour companies, restaurants, cultural institutions and others to know which tourists we do not want. And then you start to orient the city towards those you do want and not towards those you don’t want.

Is this when you should consider charging to enter Plaza España in Seville?

For me, this would be a temporary solution, a band-aid. What you really need is for the people who really come to appreciate the city to do so in the right number at the right time. Once you are clear about which tourists you want, what you need to charge is a tourist tax on all tourists, quite high if possible, and invest that money in diversifying many places around the city that people might want to visit, including to the locals. And then, you must start activating the city for the tourists you do want and attracting them. That’s where culture is important.

I have read some of your interviews in which you suggested that mayors look into the eyes of hoteliers…

Yes. By that I am suggesting that what we need is a coalition of everyone who has a stake in the visitor economy, and that coalition needs to work together to build a consensus on how we can move high-volume tourism to value tourism. medium and medium volume and perhaps in some places high value and small volume tourism, but we do not want Seville or Barcelona to become monocultures. That means the mayor and other city leaders need to look hoteliers in the eye and say: this is not going to work if you charge young people 30 or 50 euros per night or 50 euros per night or 30 euros per night for young people. who come just to party. The mayor has to tell them that unless they change, they are killing the city.

You also suggest that gentrification is not necessarily negative.

Let’s see, gentrification occurs when people with a higher average income move to a place with a lower average income. That’s happening. But in terms of cities, higher-income people moving to lower-income places isn’t always a bad thing. There can be good gentrification and bad gentrification. Good gentrification is when people with higher incomes move out, the place improves, but people with lower incomes stay in the place and we get a mixed-income neighborhood. Bad gentrification is when these lower income people are forced to move. The way to achieve good gentrification is to articulate a more determined housing strategy, with more houses and the ability of each city to invest in a broader range of housing, available for different income levels.

In another vein, we are in a country where competition between cities is fierce. You, in your book Global Cities, encourage competition, although within an order…

Well, good competition is that which raises standards, that makes everyone want to innovate and be the best version of themselves. Then Málaga becomes the best Málaga, Seville the best Seville, Barcelona the best Barcelona, ??Madrid the best Madrid. But when you compete with each other on price, and the city offers itself as a cheaper place than the rest, you compete downwards. This bad competition does not produce benefits of any kind when we talk about territories. That’s one point. The second point is that cooperation is obviously important…

Large city systems, such as Bosh-Wash or San-San…

Indeed. So in Spain we should also start talking about networks and groups of cities. Spanish and Portuguese cities are a team and they need to play as a team. They are cities very well connected with high-speed railways, with good universities and with a fantastic cultural variety. They can compete not against each other, but compete as a team against other city teams.

In this context, I do not think you are very in favor of Barcelona and Madrid competing for a Formula One Grand Prix.

Well, I’m one of those people who doesn’t think organizing a grand prix is ??something a city should do. I understand that there is a visitor economy linked to it; I understand that there are technological and engineering advantages. But I think it’s a celebration of the internal combustion engine, which is a major cause of climate change.

Competing also means being in a good place in the increasingly numerous city rankings. How do you value them?

Well, I’ve spent 20 years studying those rankings, and I always tell my interlocutors:  if you’re going to use city rankings, you should read them all, not just one. Because cities have the habit of choosing the classification that says they are good and telling you, hey, in this classification we are the best city in the world…