In early April, I joined Greenlight Greater Portland in a "best practices" trip to Barcelona to learn about that city's successful urban redevelopment. The city has been transforming itself over the past 30 years from one of Europe's least hospitable communities, to one of its most popular – for tourists and businesses alike.
The best example of this transformation is the 22@barcelona project. This is a 115-block redesign of a former industrial area (22A is the zoning category for industrial sites). The city and regional planning entity collaborated with private industries and the university to make this section of Barcelona the creative heart of the Catalonia region's new economy.
They identified five key industries they want to attract to their new "Ecology of Innovation" – media, information technology, medical sciences, green energy and design. Then they set about installing the infrastructure that attracts those industries. Their top priorities: multi-modal transportation, a resilient and efficient energy system, and an educated work force.
They moved forward with long-planned street connections, streetcars, bike paths and other transportation projects. Today, more than 46 percent of Barcelona's commuters get where they are going on foot or on bicycles. Another 35 percent use transit – buses, streetcars and light rail. Only 19 percent use cars. Even electric cars are discouraged in favor of electric motor bikes. Cars take up too much room, get in the way of freight, keep them dependent on foreign oil (or nuclear power plants, which they are trying to eliminate), and come with health and environmental risks that are too costly.
As they built the transportation system they installed state of the art underground utilities at the same time, laying pipes and wires in the cuts made for streetcars and streets.
They connected an existing waste-to-energy garbage handling facility to what is now Europe's largest underground sewage treatment facility. The two are interlinked, and treated water from the wastewater plant is mixed with seawater to cool the waste to energy plant. Solid waste from the sewage plant is transferred to the adjacent waste-to-energy plant for combustion. Electricity from the waste-to-energy plant along with heated and/or chilled water are circulated through the new underground network of pipes and wires to power, heat and cool many of the old and new buildings in the revitalized neighborhood right next door. Excess electricity from the plant is sent back to the power grid.
To provide a trained workforce for the industries they wanted to attract, the city created Barcelona Activa, a free job placement, training and small business incubator project. As of 2010, more than 263,000 people have used Barcelona Activa services. Unemployment has been cut in half. More than 1,700 businesses were created in the business incubator and 83 percent of them have survived.
Want to learn more about this amazing place? Join me at Metro Regional Center, council chambers, on Wednesday, June 22 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. for my brown bag presentation on Barcelona's Ecology of Innovation.