barcelona | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Barcelona fears becoming Venice

Barcelona’s new mayor fears the city risks becoming like Venice. Is she right?

“We don’t want to become like Venice,” is the cry from Barcelona’s new government.

Comparing Venice to Barcelona is problematic given the Spanish city has a population of 1.6 million compared to the Italian tourist centre’s 60,000. The tourist industry has long overwhelmed Venice.

A more relevant discussion is how does a city like Barcelona avoid a decline like Venice, in my interview with the deputy mayor Antoni Vives in 2013 he described his aim to see the city develop new industries and build on its existing strengths.

The new mayor’s concerns about soaring property costs displacing residents are valid –and shared with every major city in the world.

For Barcelona though the real challenge is to stay relevant in a changing global economy. For the moment the Spanish city has a long way to go, and five hundred years, before its leaders can worry about becoming the new Venice.

Building inclusive cities

Barcelona’s success in the 2014 Bloomberg Mayors’ Challenge show the human side of smart cities.

Yesterday Barcelona won the 2014 Bloomberg Mayors’ Challenge — a ideas competition for European cities.

Barcelona’s winning idea was collaborative care networks for older citizens. In Barcelona’s case one in five residents is over 65 and by 2o40 seniors will make up a quarter of the city’s population.

The approach Barcelona’s council has proposed is a combination of high tech and the community working together.

Barcelona will use digital and low-tech strategies to create a network of family members, friends, neighbors, social workers, and volunteers who together make up a “trust network” for each at-risk elderly resident.

Last year I had the opportunity to interview the Deputy Mayor of Barcelona, Antoni Vives, on how the city was using the internet of things to improve citizens’ lives.

In that interview Vives spoke on how important was that these technologies improved the lives of all citizens, not just the young and the rich. Today’s prize illustrates how the city is applying that philosophy.

For technologists, one of the tasks ahead is to show how today’s inventions are more than the toys of rich men, but are things that genuinely improve society’s well being.

Touring the Barcelona smart city project

A slideshow on how Barcelona is using the Internet of Things to build a smartcity.

Last year I posted the Geek’s Tour of Barcelona, looking at the town’s smartcity initiatives after visiting the city for Cisco’s Internet of Things World Forum.

At the Australian Internet of Things Forum in Newcastle last month I cobbled together a quick presentation around the topic to illustrate what smartcities can deliver.

This was particularly topical for Newcastle as the New Lunaticks and the local business community are supporting the Kaooma project run by Vimoc Technologies in one of the city’s entertainment districts.

Kaooma – which is an entrant in Cisco’s IoT Innovation Grand Challenge – is particularly interesting because it’s a wholly private project with little, if any, formal government support as opposed to London’s Regent Street Internet of Things initiative that’s part of a billion pound regeneration of the precinct.

Australia’s Newcastle, the world’s largest coal port, has a number of challenges itself as the country’s once in a century mining boom unwinds and city deals with a neglected downtown in the face of a rapidly changing economy.

While the Barcelona project is in early days, the presentation shows how cities are using the Internet of Things today and gives us some hints on how those uses will evolve over time.

Paul travelled to Barcelona as a guest of Cisco Systems

Cities of Industry

Governments are beginning to recognise manufacturing is part of any advanced economy, some though are struggling to abandon the last thirty years of ideology.

The latest Decoding The New Economy interview feature Laurel Barsotti, Director of Business Development at the City of San Francisco discussing how the city refound it’s entrepreneurial mojo.

A notable point about Laurel’s interview is how she has similar views to Barcelona’s Deputy Mayor Antoni Vives about the importance of industry to San Francisco.

For some time it was an article of faith in the Anglo-Saxon world that the west had become post-industrial economy where manufacturing was something dispatched to the third world and rich white folk could live well selling each other real estate and managing their neighbours’ investment funds.

“Opening doors for each other” was how a US diplomat described this 1980s vision according to former BBC political correspondent John Cole.

It’s clear now that vision was flawed and now leaders are having to think about where manufacturing, and other industries, sit in their economic plans.

Barcelona’s and San Francisco’s governments have understood this, but others are struggling to realise this is even a problem as they hang on to dreams of running their economies on tourism, finance and flogging their decidedly ordinary college courses to foreign students.

For some political and business leaders this is a challenge to their fundamental economic beliefs. It’s going to be interesting to see how they fare in the next twenty years.

Building smart cities

Barcelona has a big vision for the city’s future as Deputy Mayor Antoni Vires describes.

What will the connected cities of the 21st Century look like and how will they provide service for even their most disadvantaged residents?

The latest Decoding the New Economy Video features an interview with Antoni Vives, Deputy Mayor of Barcelona, about his community’s journey to become a smart city.

What’s striking about talking with Antoni is how passionate he is about Barcelona’s future and the importance of the city building new industries around the digital economy.

Particularly notable is the administration’s vision for the city which combines Barcelona’s traditional industries, such as the port, with future technologies.

“Barcelona has to become a city of culture, creativity, knowledge but mainly fairness and well being,” says Antoni when asked on where he sees his city as being in ten years time. “I would love to see my city as a place where people live near where they work, I would love to see the city self sufficient in energy and it should be zero emission city.”

“Rather than having a pattern of PITO – ‘Product In, Trash Out’ we should move to what we call the DIDO model – ‘Data In Data Out’.”

It’s a broad view for the future which many other city and state governments will be watching closely.

Give a man a glass of cava

Barcelona’s Hotel Arts features friendly staff and a nice glass of cava in the evening.

Sitting next to Frank Gehry’s giant goldfish on the city’s waterfront and marina, Barcelona’s Arts Hotel was part of the city’s redevelopment after the 1992 Olympics.

Like the giant fish, the hotel is a quirky building with a strange layout including an entrance that requires guests to catch a lift to the lobby on first floor.

Once you find the lobby, the staff are an incredibly friendly bunch hailing from around the Eurozone, including Dutch, French and Icelandic workers among the Spanish staff.

If you happen to be in the hotel between five and six, the management puts on free cava and nibbles in the lobby.

Free Wi-Fi is available is available in the lobby which adds to it being a comfortable place to sit if you have time to kill after checking out.

The standard suites, known as Deluxe Rooms, are comfortable with all the features expected in a five star hotel.

Double beds are comfortable with a high tech bedside control panel with several pre-set lighting configurations, a built in alarm clock and electric blinds that do a very good job of keeping the sun out if you want to lie in.

The bathroom has a spacious bath with a separate shower, bidet and toilet along with a generous range of toiletries, toothbrush and razor. The bathrobes are particularly comfortable.

The writing desk is good but suffers from a lack of power sockets with only a double, standard European three pin plug slot that’s already used by the desklamp and cordless phone. You’ll have to at least unplug the phone to get some work done.

Both ethernet and wireless access are available with a 25 Euro a day charge for access. It is possible to leech off the free hotel access as it appears to allow consecutive logins after each twenty-four period expires.

The inroom coffee machine is a Nespresso unit — the innovation that has change hotel coffe. One drawback with these devices is that management restricts guests to two free cartridges a day with additional ones charged at an extortionate four euro each. If you’re a coffee addict, it’s worthwhile buying a box of cartridges from the supermarket two blocks away.

While you’re at the supermarket it’s worth buying some drinks and snacks to get around the standard extortionate five star minibar prices, be warned though that the term ‘mini-bar’ was coined for the tiny fridges in the hotel so if you bring your own supplies don’t expect to fit in anything larger than a 600ml bottle.

A similar problem affects the room safe which is big enough to fit passports, wallets and phones but not a 10″ iPad.

One of the features with the Arts Hotel are the delightful roof top gardens with quiet nooks and crannies featuring various sculptures and architectural features.

The hotel’s swimming pool is 25m but is fiendishly cold, it’s good to wake up to but the idea of doing 40 laps quickly evaporates as any more than ten minutes in the pool isn’t comfortable.

Warming up after a swim isn’t so bad with some hammocks to relax in, these are popular with conference delegates killing time after checking out from the hotel, so grab one early.

Overall, the hotel is a good choice if you’re not travelling on a budget. While the location is a little way from Barcelona’s major tourist attractions it’s a 15 minute walk from the El Born district of Barcelona and two of the city’s tourist bus routes.

The most notable thing about the Hotel Arts is the friendliness of its staff – even if you can’t afford to stay there it’s worthwhile dropping around the lobby at 5pm for a glass of cava.