A world famous Spanish city is pinning its hopes on a tired industrial site which looks set for a staggering transformation.
Attached to an old power station are The Three Chimneys which tower over a working class area of Barcelona. The site has been vacant since 2011 but the city’s leaders have it earmarked to provide an answer to some of the tourist hotspot’s current issues.
This year tensions in the city have grown, with many locals taking to the streets tired of seemingly ever-increasing housing costs and what they claim is overtourism.
Protests got so heated that angry residents waved signs reading “tourists go home”, squirted water pistols and threw rubbish at holidaymakers sitting in cafes and restaurants.
But now the gigantic industrial site in Sant Adrià de Besos – which is four miles from the city centre – could be transformed into hundreds of new homes and a digital media hub.
Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni said that the site is “a vestige of the industrial past that becomes a window of opportunity,” reports The Times.
He said: “The demand to come to Barcelona is exponential, that’s the only certainty. I want us to be a city with tourism, not a tourist city.”
Anna Torres-Delgado, a University of Barcelona geography professor, explained that the hope is that such a project will help spread the tourists rather than diminish or stop the visitor numbers. Barcelona receives 170,000 visitors daily and around 12 million annually.
She said: “We are not tackling ‘over tourism’ from the point of view of degrowth or stopping tourism, but rather we are trying to disperse it over time and territory,” reports The Times.
Developers are currently bidding to develop the site and the project is expected to be completed by 2029.
Meanwhile, according to data from the Barcelona Council, some 156,000 coaches drive around the Catalonian capital every year, which amounts to an average of more than 40 per day. This has become a big problem – blocking traffic in some areas of the city, particularly around the iconic Sagrada Familia and, more recently, the Ronda Universitat.
As authorities continue to look for ways to get on top of the city’s mass tourism problem, the latest plan aims to reduce the number of tourist buses in the city centre by charging them a lot more to park.
According to municipal data, parking in the city centre currently has an average price of 20 euros (£16.80) per day for tourist buses. If the new plan is approved, they will be required to pay close to 80 euros (£67.30) instead, according to The Local.
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