Public advertising is pollution and it needs to be curbed. So insists a new policy from Barcelona, which will substantially cut back on how much advertising City Hall permits in public places. In a bid to make Barcelona a more attractive, less aesthetically cluttered place, street advertising in the city will be reduced by 20 percent in July 2016.
Spain may be facing significant economic and political challenges these days, but Barcelona's city-building remains one of the best models in the world. Few cities inspire my thinking more.
Thus it was a fitting location for the second Global Smart City Expo/Congress, and my invitation to speak was a good excuse to return, and share some of the best "steal-able" lessons. The Congress may have talked a lot about urban technologies, but Barcelona reminds us how smart the fundamentals are when it comes to making great cities.
Iberoamerican Center for Strategic Urban
Development (CIDEU in the Spanish acronym), which has
more than a hundred member cities, all of which have applied
the Barcelona Strategic Urban Planning methodology.
Another city network dedicated to the dissemination of strategic
planning is UCLG, with more than a thousand member
cities. In a recently published guidebook, UCLG (2010)
offers detailed recommendations for the implementation of
strategic plans, and it seeks to influence institutions such as
the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, several UN organizations, as
well as the Commission of the European Union, requesting
them to "encourage strategic planning processes providing
human, financial and technical resources primarily to small
and medium sized cities" (p. 21).
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