Barcelona, model of urban innovation

BARCELONA, Spain — How can a city resuscitate an entire depressed, old inner-city district, many of its blocks marked by abandoned factories?

Even more challenging: How to transform the same area into a high-powered knowledge hub that adds jobs by the thousands and draws dozens of high-powered national and international firms?

The "free enterprise" American approach might be to bring in the bulldozers, create an industrial park that displaces the old residents and maybe offer companies public subsidies to move in.

Not Barcelona. Ten years ago this entrepreneurial city decided to build a modern "knowledge economy" close to downtown in its old, waterfront Poblenou district, once a leading cotton mill center, renaming it "22@Barcelona, The Innovation District."

Barcelona's then-mayor, Joan Clos, took the initiative. But an extraordinary political consensus — ranging all the way from the city's capitalist right wing to socialist-oriented left — came together to design 22@Barcelona.

Their central idea: Talent is the gold of our time, crucial to building thriving new economic clusters. Talented people (and cutting-edge firms) want lively urban environments instead of the isolation of corporate campuses. They're anxious to brush shoulders with other gifted people from companies, universities and the artistic realm.

So the district has been consciously shaped to include attractive green spaces, restaurants and entertainment, bike lanes, and plentiful public transit both within the area and between it and greater Barcelona.

But to create that environment — and not force out the families and workers living there — the Barcelona politicians decided on an ingenious but highly controlled form of real-estate redevelopment.

Each of the district's 100-square-meter blocks — rather than individual land holdings — was made the basic unit for regeneration. Once 60 percent of landowners in any one of the 115 blocks agree to act collectively, they can — as a community — increase the value of their property by getting city permission to rebuild with greater height (more stories) than allowed in the past.

But there's a trade-off. In return, owners must agree to release 30 percent of their land for new public investment. Of that 30 percent, the city takes a third each for shared green space, for publicly subsidized housing, and for knowledge-based activity such as a technology center or university facility. The land parcels can also be exchanged across blocks — for a larger park, for example.

One can imagine American property owners screaming "property rights" and "eminent domain abuse" at any such proposal. Not to mention another taking: Owners are obliged to pay 50 percent of street infrastructure improvements.

But look at what they gain, notes Josep Miquel Pique, Barcelona's forceful CEO of the district's operations. There is revitalized public space to lift the spirits of residents and workers. District heating and cooling, plus fiber-optic connections, are provided. There's actually a pneumatic underground waste-disposal system (with colored bags to make recycling easy). Plus a system of underground "galleries" for cables and pipes and for future use, avoiding the need to keep digging up streets for improvements.

And the innovation district isn't shy about defining and shaping the economic environment. It has defined five top "innovation clusters" — information technology, media, design, medical devices and energy efficiency. And, says Pique, "We are managing the ecosystem of innovation. We've grown to 1,441 companies, many international, in nine years. If we need university talent, finance or information technology, we promote the connections to make it possible. We incite artists to work with the companies, for inspiration. We work together with the private firms, the universities, to create a critical mass to compete in the world."

The physical result is an amazingly eclectic neighborhood. Technology centers and new apartments are cheek by jowl with old lots and housing still in transition. Government offices, television and radio studios, cultural centers, social service agencies — they're all there, and much more.

Yet Pique claims, "We don't forget the people living here beforehand. We are including social housing. We recognize residents' children as the new generation of talent we want right here. We invite students for internships in the firms, the activities we have. That's the difference between the Silicon Valley model and ours."

An American can't visit this district without wondering: Could U.S. cities ever find the left-to-right political consensus, and muster the faith in a government-chartered organization with similar powers, to remake our lagging neighborhoods with parallel stem-to-stern remedies and approaches?

For our dawning back-to-the-city era, what better? But I'm not optimistic. Barcelona-style collaboration (and trust in government) just isn't in our political DNA.

But what if a talent-focused economic era, marked by keen global competition, requires intensely entrepreneurial and rule-setting city government on the Barcelona model? It will be a tough shift. But we can't keep saying "no" and "can't" forever.

Neal Peirce's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com