Run a park network
“You will find an open, interested City Council that will listen and facilitate initiatives as long as they are consistent with the general interest of the city”, assured the new mayor, Jaume Collboni, to the young people – all between 26 and 35 years old, professionally active and with work experience of more than five years – who for an hour and a half presented their conclusions in the Saló de Cent. It was not a new role for Collboni, who already attended the sessions of the three previous promotions, as first deputy mayor and head of the Economy area, although this time he only came to close .
Yesterday, the fourth deputy mayor, Jordi Valls, was in charge of maintaining the dialogue with the new promotion, who shared some diagnoses and challenges with the audience. He acknowledged, for example, that “we have a serious problem in attracting talent” but emphasized the fact that “we have introduced innovative policies” in this field. Or that industrial growth is not possible without a metropolitan vision because “we don’t have enough space in the city”.
The Barcelona 2043 program has had group dynamics led by Xavier Verdaguer, executive director of Imagine Creativity Center. In this way, the 37 participants, coming from all professional fields (researchers, lawyers, economists, IT…) and committed to the future of the city, had the opportunity to get to know each other. Building bridges between emerging local talent and between this group and established managers and professionals who can speak first hand about key aspects of the city is the main challenge of the program.
The six working groups addressed the Barcelona of mobility and infrastructure; cultural and sports; entrepreneurship and technology; the Barcelona of tourism; that of science, medicine and the pharmaceutical sector, and the Barcelona of industry and architecture. From each area, they have identified context, problems, opportunities and proposals thanks to a host (for example, Michael Pellot, director of international relations of TMB, in mobility; Valentí Oviedo, general director of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, in culture, or the architect and landscape architect Enric Batlle, in the design and architecture section), two speakers and a speaker.
From the diagnosis of each area, problems and opportunities were identified to draw one or several proposals. In mobility, in addition to the parks
