Escola Universitària d’Enginyeria Tècnica de Telecomunicació La Salle
Final Thesis
Graduate in Management of Business and Technology
BARCELONA 1992 – 2016 FROM OLYMPIC CITY TO SMART CITY
Student Promoter
Barbora Trocilova Christopher Kennett
ACTA DE L'EXAMEN DEL TREBALL FI DE GRAU
Meeting of the evaluating panel on this day, the student:
Barbora Trocilova
Presented their final thesis on the following subject:
Barcelona 1992 – 2016: From Olympic City to Smarty City
At the end of the presentation and upon answering the questions of the members of the panel, this thesis was awarded the following grade:
Barcelona,
MEMBER OF THE PANEL MEMBER OF THE PANEL
PRESIDENT OF THE PANEL
2
Barcelona 1992 – 2016: From Olympic City to Smart City?
By Barbora Trocilova
3 ABSTRACT
When throwing a rock in calm water, waves are created. These waves get smaller and smaller as they move away from the rock. However, the cause of these waves remains the same; a rock. In the case of Barcelona, this rock was the Olympic Games of 1992 and the waves are the legacies that remained. Today, twenty-four years after the Olympics, Barcelona’s development and growth is still influenced by the preparation needed for the Olympics and the Games themselves. This dissertation will analyze various legacies and Barcelona’s path to becoming the city it is known to be today.
4 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ...... 4 Table of Contents ...... 5 List of Tables and Figures ...... 6 Tables ...... 6 Figures ...... 6 Acknowledgement ...... 7 Executive Summary ...... 8 1. Introduction ...... 9 2. Literature review ...... 10 2.1 Birth of Barcelona ...... 10 2.1.1 Barcelona under Franco ...... 11 2.1.2 Barcelona’s need for Olympics ...... 11 2.2 Bid & stakeholder objectives ...... 13 2.2.1 Financial resources ...... 14 2.3 Summer Olympics of 1992 ...... 15 2.4 Legacy ...... 15 2.4.1 Barcelona’s legacy ...... 16 2.4.1.1 Urban ...... 16 2.4.1.2 Tourism ...... 18 2.4.1.3 Sports ...... 20 2.4.1.4 Economic ...... 22 2.4.1.5 Social/cultural ...... 24 3. Methodology ...... 26 4. Barcelona 2006-2016 ...... 27 4.1 Barcelona’s Smart City Strategy ...... 28 4.2 Legacy: Moving towards Smart City ...... 28 4.2.1 Urban ...... 29 4.2.1.1 Phase 1- Infrastructure ...... 29 4.2.1.2 Phase 2 – Attracting Businesses ...... 31 4.2.1.3 Phrase 3 - Citizens ...... 32 4.2.2 Social/Cultural + Government ...... 34 4.2.3 Sports ...... 38 4.2.4 Tourism ...... 40 4.2.5 Economic ...... 42 5. Conclusion ...... 44 References ...... 47 Appendix ...... 54
Word count: 10,179
5 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
TABLES Table 1: Reasons why Barcelona needed Olympics 1992 Table 2: Major stakeholders and their reasons for hosting the 1992 Olympics Table 3: Source of the Olympic investment Table 4: International sporting events hosted by Barcelona Table 5: Recognition of Catalan Political and Cultural Symbols Table 6: Personal interviews and their importance Table 7: Positive aspects of personal interviews Table 8: Negative aspects of personal interviews and solutions Table 9: Mayors of Barcelona and their main focus Table 10: Summary of the benefits of Open Camp for various stakeholders
FIGURES Figure 1: Main urban renewal areas of Barcelona 1986 - 1992 Figure 2: Number of overnight stays in Barcelona from 1990 - 2014 Figure 3: Cruise passenger traffic between 2007 - 2012 Figure 4: Construction regulations of 22@ Figure 5: Catalonia’s and Spain’s Gross domestic expenditure on R&D relative to the GDP Figure 6: Percentage of foreign population in Catalonia and Spain (2001–2015)
Figure 7: Airplane passengers landing in El Prat (2006- 2015) Figure 8: Barcelona’s vs. Spain’s unemployment rate (2001-2015)
6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Firstly, I would like to thank my thesis promoter, Professor Christopher Kennett. Without his support, patience and valuable knowledge, this paper would have never been accomplished. Professor Kennett not only guided me through my last stage of my bachelor’s degree and through my thesis, but he was there for the past four year whenever I needed an advice.
I would also like to thank Professor Dawn Hiscock, the thesis tutor and the most understanding professor I had at La Salle. Together with Professor Kennett, Professor Hiscock inspired me to follow my passion for sports and focus my thesis around a subject that’s relevant and interests me greatly.
Furthermore, I would like to thank Professor German Aragon Castro, Professor Brian McGarry, Professor Ricardo Torres Kompen and Professor Paul Fox. They all played a vital role not only in my academic life, but also personal. I believe that they all participated in forming the person that I am today.
I would like to show appreciation to the interviewees that made the thesis possible. Special thanks to Xavier Castillo Ferrer, Josep Pique, Ramon Martín de Pozuelo Genís, Didier Grimaldi, Aidana Zhumadilova, Nabil Herzi, Jonathan Zimnoch, Paul Canning, Elisabet Garcia, Mohsen Far and Zhanna Go for their precious time. Without their help and experience, this thesis would not be the same.
Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for the constant support, love and mainly encouragement. Without their help, I would not be where I am today.
7 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Summer Olympics Games, occurring every four years since 1896, are the largest sporting event worldwide. Clearly they require extensive and expensive preparation and once they end, they leave an unforgettable memory and influence the further development of the city. Barcelona was fortunate to host the Olympic Games in 1992, during a period of transformation and is a clear example of the Olympic legacy that stays behind. Majority of the research into the Olympic legacy was conducted when the Games had ended and for special anniversaries, ex. 10 years later.
Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to update the Olympic legacy and to prove the connection between the games and the development of the city. Ten personal interviews with experts from various fields are explored, primary focusing on the urban, economic, tourism, sport and social/cultural aspects of the Olympic legacy.
The urban deindustrialization of Barcelona took place during the Olympic preparation and continued afterwards. New districts, such as the 22@ area, were built that are transforming Barcelona to a knowledge-based economy. Tourism became a key part of the economy as the city’s popularity grew since the Olympics. It also demonstrates that the Olympic legacy is not always positive, as massive tourism is causing problems in the city. Sporting legacy is another positive aspect that came from the Olympics, as the city managed to incorporate sport to everyday life. Majority of the facilities continue to be used for sport-related purposes, as Open Camp was recently opened. The society has been affected by all of the changes and the Catalan culture has been given an international platform, which resulted in more strength.
There are clear connections between the Olympic impact and the development of today’s Barcelona as the Games were a catalyst for change. The government played a huge role in not only bringing the Olympics to Barcelona in the first place, but also in transforming the city from industrialized to knowledge-based. It is difficult to conclude how Barcelona will continue developing, as the new mayor is taking a different path; further down the Smart City road.
8 1. INTRODUCTION
From very beginning, I knew that I wanted my dissertation to be focused around something that I am passionate about. As I am interested in the sports industry, it was an easy pick. I wanted my research to go more in-depth, to analyze the affect that sport can have on cities. Barcelona was the first place that I thought of, as it’s the city that I had lived in for the past four years and I knew that the Olympics had a huge impact on the development.
Lots of research has been published regarding the effects and legacy of the Olympics of 1992 on Barcelona. However, as the event happened decades ago, the researched had stopped and the correlations between the city today and the Olympics had become less evident. It’s especially hard to see the evolution as technology is rapidly transforming the everyday life and the trend of “Smart Cities” has become a hot topic.
The purpose of this thesis is to gain better understanding of how Barcelona has been developing since the Olympics of 1992. The main research question I will attempt to answer is: To what extent has Barcelona developed in terms of becoming a Smart City? Additional questions that further help answer this are:
• How have the Olympics set up a platform for Barcelona’s further development? • How has the Olympic legacy developed throughout the years? • To what extend has the social/cultural, economic, urban, sport and touristic aspect of Barcelona changed/developed since the 1992 Olympics?
The dissertation will begin with a literature review, consisting of a brief history of Barcelona, why the city needed the Olympics and various stakeholder objectives. The literature review concludes with an analysis of the legacy until 2004- 2006, mainly focusing on the urban, sport, economic and social/cultural aspects. The methodology part follows, explaining how the research questions were answered. The next part is mainly from the information gathered in personal interviews, and the legacy aspects are analyzed twenty-four years after the 1992 Games. The thesis concludes with the answers I have found to the research questions.
9 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 BIRTH OF BARCELONA
Barcelona, the second-largest city in Spain and capital city of the autonomous community of Catalonia has a very long and rich history. Some argue that the city was originally established in 218 BCE by the Carthaginians as ‘Barcino’. (Callicó, 2007) Others say that Barcelona was founded when the ninth ship, or ‘Barca Nona’, of Hercules’ fleet crashed on the sandy shores of the Iberian Peninsula. The survivors were found enjoying the beach and Mediterranean sun and decided to stay. (Harris, 2014)
Looking forward a few centuries, Barcelona developed into a prominent port city that was in the hands of many world powers such as the Romans, Germanic rule, and the Crown of Aragon. It benefited from its strategic location in the Mediterranean Sea, establishing a connection between Africa, Asia and Europe. (Callicó, 2007)
Catalonia began to lose its independence in the 18th century, when the Royal Lines merged and the Spanish monarchy succeeded. The War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714) took place and in the last battle, Siege of Barcelona, Catalonia lost its independence in 1714 to Spain. (Callicó, 2007)
An industrial revolution followed, which led to higher employment, population and urbanization in Barcelona. (Harris, 2014) Events such as the Universal Exposition of 1888 and 1929 held in Barcelona contributed to its transformation to a modern city. After the events, the Catalan capital became known as the ‘Paris of the South’; with new urban policies in effect, creating parks
As a protest to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Barcelona prepared to host the People’s Olympics (a socialist alternative to the Olympic Games). The Olympic Stadium (already built in 1929) as well as the Montjuic area was further developed. The event never took place as the Spanish Civil War began. After three years of conflict Barcelona fell in 1939 and the war ended with the Nationalists’
10 (rightist) taking power under the command of General Francisco Franco. (Callicó, 2007)
2.1.1 BARCELONA UNDER FRANCO Once General Francisco Franco took control of Spain in 1939, a dictatorship was established and Catalonia experienced wide spread repression. There was censorship, ban of left-wing political activism and many Catalan nationalist institutions were disbanded. Regional governments were eliminated, as politics were centralized under the regime in Madrid. In Catalonia this meant that the Catalan culture was repressed, including language and many traditional symbols. (Solsten and Meditz, 1988).
Franco gradually transformed Spain into autarky and the country turned in upon itself. At the same time, steps were taken to modernize Spain, by investing government money into infrastructure and various industries. Catalonia was connected to the rest of Spain using highway system in 1948 and the Port of Barcelona was modernized/expanded. The following year SEAT, car manufacturer, began to construct a factory outside of Barcelona, resulting in more employment opportunities. (Lloyd). However, the country remained a dictatorship and with strict trade restrictions in place from other European counties. It struggled to recover from the Civil War and development in economic terms.
2.1.2 BARCELONA’S NEED FOR OLYMPICS The Franco-era ended in 1975, as Franco died. Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon became his successor and Spain slowly transformed from totalitarianism to democracy. The Generalitat de Catalunya, (Catalan Regional Autonomous Government), was reinstated to govern Catalonia with the challenge of recovering from the repression that Catalonia had suffered and re-establishing Catalan culture (Kennett and Moragas 2006).
As a result of the Franco regime, Barcelona needed an international event such as the Olympics for multiple reasons. The major reasons are summarized in table 1, and are: cultural revival, political transformation, repositioning of city, economic investment and to obtain new infrastructure.
11 Table 1: Reasons why Barcelona needed Olympics 1992 Reason Explanation Cultural The Catalan language, culture and traditions were banned and now had the revival chance to be re-embraced. The Olympics would provide Barcelona with the possibility to show off the Catalan culture to the rest of the world. (Garcia, 2001) How Barcelona managed to incorporate the Catalan element will be discussed later on. Political Catalonia, as well as the whole of Spain, went from a totalitarian regime to transformation democracy after the death of Franco. Such transition is not always the easiest, however it was a successful for Spain. In 1978, the creation of seventeen autonomous regions (Catalonia being one of them) resulted from a political decentralization process. Each region was now able to control its health, education, urban, social and environmental policies. A few years later (in 1982), at the national election, the Social Party won, which was the final confirmation that Spain had transitioned into democracy. In Catalonia, the politics and culture are interconnected, so by hosting the Olympics, it gave more awareness to the different Catalan culture, which in return provided the local government with more recognition. (Elwes, 2015). Repositioning Barcelona was seen as an industrial city, not as a popular destination for of city vacations/visits. By hosting the Olympic Games, it gave Catalonia the opportunity to place Barcelona on the map and to increase its popularity among world travelers. In 1990, the primary reason to come to Barcelona was for business, and only 23% of the visits were for tourism. Ten years later 60% of the visits are due to tourism. (Duran, 2005, pg.8) Economic With every Olympic Game comes heavy investment from the public and investment private sectors. The main reason for this extensive investment is because of the extreme preparations that needed to host such event. The Olympic village, various venues, roads, transportation, communication facilities, etc.; all need to be prepared in order for the event to run successfully. Each year the expectations are higher than the previous and the city is under pressure to put on the best show possible, therefore, the price of hosting the Olympics has increased over time. (Chalip, 2003, pg. 195) However, majority of what has been invested in the city remains, forming part of the legacy. New During the rule of General Franco, Barcelona became an “industrial infrastructure backwater”, meaning that it consisted of many factories, and the city itself wasn’t taken care of too well. Factories were built, but the city was underdeveloped. (Taylor, 2012) The city began to lose its competitive advantage in manufacturing to countries like China. Therefore, there was a need to deindustrialized, develop the service sector and attract tourists. The city mainly consisted of factories and warehouses. Using the economic investment and the relatively short period of time until the Games, Barcelona was given the opportunity that it needed for restructure. (Taylor, 2012)
And so a window of opportunity opened for Barcelona at the beginning of the 1980s to bid for the Games and to use them to achieve multiple objectives connected to the development of the city, region and for some, emerging nation.
12 2.2 BID & STAKEHOLDER OBJECTIVES
From 1980 until 2001, Juan Antonio Samaranch was the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It is no coincidence that he is from Barcelona and that during his presidency Barcelona was nominated to host the Games in 1992. Samaranch admitted in his memoirs that he felt like the bid was a reflection on his presidency. If Barcelona wasn’t picked, he would have resigned as he felt that the votes were against his credibility (Samaranch, 2002). Samaranch kept track of the bidding process and often had private meetings with influential political leaders to maintain political consensus around the Games project. (Moragas and Botella, 2002)
Samaranch wasn’t the only political actor with motives for Barcelona to host the Games. The Barcelona City Hall/Province saw the opportunity for urban change and modernization, Generalitat aimed for “Catalization” of the Games and the Central Spanish Government saw the Olympics as part of the “1992 Project. (Kennett and Moragas 2006, pg. 181) In-depth explanation of the motives is in table 2.
Table 2: Major stakeholders and their reasons for hosting the 1992 Olympics Stakeholder Reason for Olympics 1992 Barcelona The goal of Barcelona City Hall was to transform and modernize the City city. They wanted the Olympics to be an opportunity for Barcelona to Hall/Province invest in the infrastructure and refurbishment. In order to achieve so more successfully, HOSLA, Barcelona Holding Olympic, S.A, was formed. It was a joint venture created by the central Spanish Government and Barcelona City Hall. The organization’s main purpose was to facilitate investment processes. They focused on the main Olympic facilities, new roads and the Olympic Village. (Moragas and Botella, 2002, pg 6) Generalitat The Generalitat also saw the Olympics as an opportunity to present the culture. They wanted to “Catalanizate” the Barcelona Games. Participants, visitors and TV viewers were given insight to the political circumstances in Catalonia. They saw the tradition, language, culture and the different identity as well as the conflict surrounding the regional and central government. (Garcia, 2001) The goal was to present a newer image of “three main geopolitical groupings involved: Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain.” (Moragas, Moreno, Kennett, 2003, pg. 283) Central The Central Spanish Government, which was socialist and led by Spanish Felipe Gonzales, thought of the Olympics as part of a bigger picture. Government Together with the Expo occurring in Seville the same year and Madrid being the “city of culture”, they referred to the events as “1992 Project”. The goal was to promote the image of Spain and present the country as “passionate and democratic”, as opposed to the Franco’s previous dictatorship.
13 The political stakes were thus high for Barcelona as it won the bid and started preparations to host the 1992 Olympics. Often conflicting ideologies had to be negotiated and consensus found to ensure successful delivery of the Games. Pressure mounted as the budget for the Games skyrocketed and finance had to be secured.
2.2.1 FINANCIAL RESOURCES Over the past century, Olympic Games have boosted in popularity and size. The number of events and participating countries has increased. This also means that the cost of hosting such enormous event has amplified. (Chalip, 2003, pg. 195)
In order to cover all of the expenses, the financing of the Barcelona Games came from both private and public investments. Table 3 summarizes the main types of investment and how they contributed to the Olympics. The mixed private-public investment and teamwork was one of the keys to Barcelona’s success and became known as “Barcelona Model”. Major urban development occurred in the construction not only of the Olympic sports facilities but also the Olympic Village (a new, postmodern neighborhood built within the city, near the sea), Olympic Port and the regenerated waterfront area, the Rondas (belt roads that surrounds the city), extended airport and public transportation systems, among others.
Considering the size of the city, the budget grew to gigantic proportions as more and more urban projects were added to the Games, as they fast became the ideal excuse to achieve the development that had not occurred during the Franco regime and put Catalonia back on the map.
Table 3: Source of the Olympic investment Type of investment Total investment Source of expenditure Private investment 313,017 million pesetas Housing, hotels, toll motorways and business/entrepreneurial centers Public investment 956,630 million pesetas Ring roads, sport and cultural facilities transportation infrastructure Percentage investment distribution
Source: adopted from Brunet, 1995, pg. 11
14 2.3 SUMMER OLYMPICS OF 1992
Overall the turnout was outstanding, as 10,563 athletes from 172 nations met in Barcelona and competed in the 16-day event. The United Team (Russia) won, followed by USA and Germany. Spain came in at 6th place, a record for the host nation and a key to success of the Games in sporting terms.
The main goal of the event for the city of Barcelona was to become a “better forum for the meeting of athletes from around the world, offer excellent competitions in accord with the Olympic spirit, and promote a great urban transformation that would improve the quality of life and attraction of the city”. (Brunet, 1995, pg. 3) All of these goals were surpassed in many ways, proving that Olympics of 1992 were a great achievement for Barcelona.
The success was recognizable worldwide, as Vecsey wrote in an article for New York Times, “The athletes never had a chance. No matter how well they jumped and ran and rowed, they could never dominate these Summer Games. The city won the Games. The people of Catalonia won the Games”. (1992)
2.4 LEGACY
Research on the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games concludes that the short and medium-term impacts were successful and that a positive legacy was left in the city (Moragas et al, 1995; 2002). Legacy, however, is a very broad word, which most are familiar with but don’t understand the significance of. According to Richard Cashman, it has two meanings, “a specific meaning relating to an individual bequest or a more general meaning, referring to anything that is left over from an era or an event.” (2003, pg. 31)
Legacy can also be divided into two major categories: tangible and intangible. Tangible legacies are the infrastructures that help “improve the living standards of local residence.” Intangible legacies are “not as visible”, but equally important. They include, for example, the national pride and knowledge obtained from hosting events. (Viehoff & Poyner, 2015, pg. 23)
Researchers typically focus on how the Olympics serve as a ‘catalyst of urban change’ (Essex, 1998). They argue that legacy is usually linked with optimistic
15 thoughts, however not everyone agrees that the Olympic legacy is positive. Boskoff stated, “The Olympics is a temporary thing. It’s like a rocket that shoots up in the sky, a big expensive rocket, and then it’s gone… Maybe the best thing is to forget about the Olympics and go about the business of becoming a first-class city.” (Torpy, 2002, pg 2) Evaluating the overall legacy of a Games is complex as it’s multidimensional, varies from city to city and between periods in time. There are both positive and negative impacts of hosting an Olympic Games and these change over time as the city evolves. (Berthier, 1999)
2.4.1 BARCELONA’S LEGACY Every country hopes that the legacy of the Olympics will be positive and long lasting. According to the research, Barcelona has accomplished just that (Kennett and Moragas, 2006). The Barcelona Olympics of 1992 had a tremendous impact on the city and transformed it into the popular world destination that it is today. (Taylor, 2012) The urban transformation has made everyday life easier and is still present. Tourism increased and economic conditions improved. Sport has become part of the culture and the Catalonian identity has grown stronger.
2.4.1.1 URBAN Infrastructure is at the epicenter of the Olympic Games. Well-developed transportation systems, sporting venues, accommodations, etc. are necessary to host a successful Olympic Games. The standard of such infrastructure has been increasing just as the Games progress through time. Early Olympic Games, due to their smaller scale, did not need as much in terms of infrastructure. Since 1984, there has also been an increase in the importance of non-Olympic structures. Having new infrastructure helps with the effectiveness of the Games operations and contributes to the image of the host city in the eyes of the world. (Essex, 2003, pg. 94-96)
Before the Olympics in Barcelona, the city was primarily an industrial center. Barcelona however took advantage of the opportunity, and managed to incorporate the “Olympic” new parts with the existing city. The old infrastructures that Barcelona already had were reformed, and the ones that were missing were built. By doing so, life was “brought back to the geographical boundaries”, meaning the coastline and the hills surrounding Barcelona. (Tzanoudaki, 2003, pg. 131) The blue areas in the map located in figure 1 show the areas renewed for the Olympics.
16 Figure 1: Main urban renewal areas of Barcelona 1986 - 1992
Source: Brunet, 2010
To better prepare Barcelona for such a global event, there had to be mass reconstruction making Barcelona more citizen and visitor friendly. There was a 268% increase in ponds and fountains and a 78% increase of green zones and beaches. (Brunet, 1995, pg. 8) During the rebuild of the city, the engineers faced a hard task: to preserve the original architecture that Barcelona possessed. For example, the grid design of the city, which was devised by Idefons Cerda in the 19th century in area of Parc de Mar remained. (Tzanoudaki, 2003, pg. 132)
Until the Olympics, Barcelona didn’t allow for easy access to the sea because simply there weren’t any beaches, instead it was an industrial area. There was a 2- mile of beachfront build in front of the Olympic Village. The Olympic Villages are usually turned into either university dorms or residential areas. Such was the case for Barcelona, as some of the barracks of the Village are now parts of Universitat Pompeu Fabra and others are for residential purposes. (Essex, 2003, pg. 96) Other major construction sites include Monjuic, Diagonal, Vall d’Hebron and Parc de Mar.
In addition, roads and highways had increased by 15% and the new sewage system grew by 17%. (Brunet, 1995, pg. 8) The Ronadas (ring roads) are two major roads that were constructed for the Olympics. They have decreased the traffic and made Barcelona a more efficient city to travel in. The new roads, airport, hotels, seafront resort (Olympic Village) and the telecommunication cost a total of $8.1million, however they are still used today. (Cashman, 2003, pg. 38)
Santiago Calatrava’s Torre de Comunicacions de Montjuïc, now known as Torre Telefonica, was built to transmit the TV coverage of the Games worldwide. It is
17 still in use today, and became the symbol of Olympics, demonstrate Barcelona’s strong tie between the Games and everyday life after the 1992. (Foster + Partners)
Venues that were built for the Olympics are still being used today for a variety of different purposes, most sport-related. For example, the location where the wrestling and weightlifting events took place has now become the Catalan National Institute for Physical Education of Catalonia. However, not all of the venues that were built for the Olympics are utilized after the events. The baseball facilities were no longer needed, so they got torn down. (Chalip, 2001) A summary of majority of the facilities and their Olympic and today use, can be found in appendix 11.
2.4.1.2 TOURISM The urban changes that Barcelona went through for the Olympics helped improve Barcelona’s image, and transformed it into an international city as well as a popular tourist destination (Walker and Porraz, 2003). Twenty years after the Olympic Games, Barcelona became the 12th most popular city in the world and 5th most popular in the Europe. (IOC, 2013, pg. 6) One of the main reasons for this is due to all of the favorable images that the city received during the Games. (Moragas, Moreno, Kennett, 2003, pg. 283) This increase in admiration for the city can be attributed to the media coverage of the Games. (Brown, 2003, pg. 215) The IOC recognizes the effect that the Games can have on the host city, and therefore pays more attention to “the touristic related aspects in candidate cities’ assessments. (Carvalhedo, 2003, pg. 222) This is not always the case, as some authors argue that the Olympics don’t create new tourists, they simply gather them for the purpose of the event. (Essex, 2003, pg. 97) Either way, authors seem to agree that there can be a touristic benefit from the Olympic Games, but only if the city can manage to come up with a leveraging “well-planned and well-coordinated” strategy. (Chalip, 2003, pg 204)
In Barcelona, the creation of Turisme de Barcelona was part of the event’s strategy. It’s responsible for promoting the city’s tourism, and is in charge of many projects, such as the iconic red touristic ‘sightseeing’ bus and tickets to museums. The organization began operating in 1993 and aims to bring together the public and private interests and to develop Barcelona further as a touristic destination. (Duran, 2005, pg. 5)
18 There is no doubt that one of the main legacies of the Games has been an increase in tourism in the city. In 1990, just two years before the Olympics, there were 118 hotels providing 10,265 rooms or 18,569 beds. By the end of 1992, the number of hotels had increased by 35%, to 148 hotels (12,352 rooms and 25,055 beds). At the same time, the occupation rate between 1990 and 1992 rose from 71% to 84%. (Duran, 2005, pg. 6) However, it’s fundamental to consider that the popularity of the city won’t continue being as high as it was during the Games and right after. Although the room capacity had increased by 44.5% between 1990 and 1994, the room occupancy had fallen by 23.2% in those years. (Essex, 2003, pg. 97)
The long-term impact of tourism can be found in the graph located in figure 2 as it demonstrates number of overnight stays by tourists visiting Barcelona from 1990 to 2014. As can be seen, there’s constant increase in the amount of tourists coming to Barcelona. (Note that the time interval varies, as the first two differences are 10 years, and then the years represented are 2013 and 2014.
Figure 2: Number of overnight stays in Barcelona from 1990 – 2014 (in 1,000 overnights)
(Statista, 2016) In order to handle more people, Barcelona’s airport, Aeropuerto El Prat, received investment. The existing terminal was modernized/expanded and a completely new terminal was also built. In 1991, the airport could handle only 2.9 million passengers. Ten years later, this figure has increased to 21 million people (Daly and Fickling, 2002).
19 However, the rampant success of Barcelona as a tourism destination has come at a price and has been criticized in recent times. The Barcelona City Hall conducted a poll in which the locals were asked what they believe Barcelona’s most serious problem. The top three results were:
- Unemployment and working conditions (31.9%) - Traffic (5.5%) - Tourism (5.3%) (Anderson, 2015) The locals believe that Barcelona is losing its “essence”, as more touristic shops are replacing the traditional stores (Anderson, 2015). The locals are also upset about the cues and how the beaches and streets are always crowded; ultimately afraid that Barcelona will slowly lose its identity (Kitching, 2015).
Although tourism’s causing a problem among the locals, it contributes to 14% of the local economy, as Barcelona is the third most visited city in Europe, after London and Paris (Kitching, 2015). According to a recent report by La Vanguardia, the tourists are keeping the “city’s cultural hubs alive”. Foreigners make up 75% of all of the visitors to the Barcelona museums. The Picasso Museum even has 93% of the total visitors come from abroad. This means that without the tourists, Barcelona would hardly be able to maintain such cultural sites (Anderson, 2015)
2.4.1.3 SPORTS Juan Jose Paradinas, a Spanish sports writer, said, "The Barcelona Olympics unleashed a torrent of money from both the government and private sources to build sports facilities all over the country and support sports which had not previously had support in Spain. By the end of the decade, we saw the results. Now Spanish sports make money”. (Barra, 2012) In a way, the Games had “injected” sport into the blood of the Catalan/Spanish people. The city became more focused on sport, as can be seen though out Barcelona. Around the port people are biking/running/rollerblading or riding on a skateboard, in the streets children are wearing FC Barcelona shirts and kicking a soccer ball around, gyms are filled and some facilities built for the Olympics are being used. Sport has become part of the daily life. Truño argues that the Olympics had left a legacy of “sport installations”, which help build up the sporting heritage. (1995, pg.46)
20 Between 1982 and 1992, sporting venues had increased by 126.4% in Barcelona. (IOC, 2013, pg. 7) Typically the sporting facilities are focused around the Olympic Village, as the organizers want everything to be centralized and close by. But in this case, the government of Barcelona believed that it would be more beneficial to have the facilities more decentralized, meaning that more than one area would be affected. The organizers came to an agreement with IOC. “Container” facilities were built, meaning that the facility was converted to other structure after the Games ended. At the end, four different areas of Barcelona were improved/effected by the Olympics, as well as fifteen other towns that surround Barcelona. (Kidd, 2003, pg. 142)
Not only “tangible” assets were left behind, as the city had gain the knowledge associated with hosting such global sporting event. The Olympics are the most watched and largest in scale, and since Barcelona had successfully managed to run that event, the city demonstrated that they are ready for anything. (McCloy, 2003, pg. 159) Since there were so many sporting facilities left after the Olympics, Tourisme de Barcelona decided to organize the “Barcelona Sports” program. It consists of the following fifteen international events that happen on yearly basis. A list of these events can be found in table 4.
Table 4: International sporting events hosted by Barcelona Month Event January “Reis” International Hockey Tournament February Trial indoor Barcelona – Motor sports March Zurich Barcelona Marathon April International Polo Tournament – Barcelona polo challenge Negrita Cup April Barcelona Tennis Open Banc Sabadell May Formula 1 Gran Premio de Espana June Trofeu Conde de Godo – Sailing June LKXA Extreme Barcelona – Action Sports July Puig Vela Classica Barcelona – Sailing August-June National Football Championships – the Spanish League September Gran Premi Monster Energy de Catalunya de MotoGP September FIA World Rallycross Barcelona September Concurs de Salts Internacional de Barcelona-Horse riding October Garmin Barcelona Triathlon November The Jean Bouin Race Barcelona World Race (Sailing) is planned to take place from December 2018 until April 2019 Source: adopted from: bcnsports, 2016
21 Viehoff & Poyner analyze the concept of brandification in their book Mega- event Cities: Urban Legacies of Global Sports Events. They compare branding of products and services such as yogurt and person-trainer to the branding of cities. They argue that in all cases it’s essential to develop a brand that reflects the “experiences and emotions associated with the image that advertise them”. This plays true for the Olympic Games and the cities that are selected for hosting them. In Barcelona’s case, the city needed to create a unique brand image “to sustain the processes of current forms of urban transformation.” The increase in infrastructure, state funding, employment, knowledge, etc. all contribute to different process (tourism, gentrification) that result in the city’s global image and urbanization. Barcelona took advantage of its “brand potential” and has become the city it is today, capable of hosting such international events. (2015, pg. 17)
2.4.1.4 ECONOMIC As the infrastructure was built and reconstructed, it also contributed positively towards the economic development of Catalonia. The same year as Barcelona was nominated for the Olympics of 1992, in 1986, Spain also joined the European Union. The region had experienced periods of growth but also recession, including a major economic crisis in 2009 (Walker and Porraz, 2003). The city successfully managed to de-industrialize, moving from its manufacturing base to the service sector, in particular tourism, fashion, gastronomy, telecommunications and more recently, high- tech industries. (Invest in Barcelona, 2016) At the same time, Barcelona has become a popular location for companies to launch new products. (Brown, 2003, pg. 215) Examples include the Salón Internacional Automovil or the Mobile World Congress.
Nuria Gispert, speaker of Parliament of Catalonia, states, “…they [organizers of the Olympics] didn’t just make the Olympic Village, but they linked the periphery to the center…I had been with mud to my knees, and now it’s integrated into the city, with everything it needs.” (Walker and Porraz, 2003). This quote clearly describes how the living conditions have improved for many people as the outskirts of the city were better connected to Barcelona. It also demonstrates how the entire area was affected, not just one area as often occurs during the Olympics. (Mahon, 2007, pg 27-
29)
22 The commercial port is another great example of an area of the city that was affected. During the event 11,000 guests stayed on the cruise ships located in the expanded commercial port. (Duran, 2005, pg. 6) Since then, Barcelona has become one of the world’s most important cruise ship destinations. The graph, located in figure 3, shows the annual passenger traffic. The port was further constructed and OneOcean Port Vell is becoming a popular yachting destination (Tooy, 2016)
Figure 3: Cruise passenger traffic between 2007 - 2012
Source: Creuers
Employment plays a complex role in the economic legacy. The month following Barcelona’s nomination to host the Olympics, November 1986, there were 127,774 people registered as unemployed in Barcelona. In July 1992, middle of the Olympics, there were 60,885. (Brunet, 1995, pg.18) Jobs were created in the build-up to the Games, mainly in the construction sector. After the Games these jobs disappeared. Still, the Olympics had created an estimate of 20,019 permanent jobs. (Brunet, 2002, pg.9) The longer-term employment impacts are difficult to measure as employment is affected by multiple factors. Jobs were created in the tourism services, contributing 14% of Barcelona’s economy (Anderson, 2015).
Barcelona further developed as the city prepared to host the Forum 2004. The financing method was same as for the Olympic Games; €2860 million was raised using the Barcelona Model. (“Forum Barcelona” – City Protocol) The plan was to regenerate the Besos River, further open the city to the beach, remodel the purification plant and install a photovoltaic power station. The project was the continuation and is the direct legacy of the Olympic of 1992 (Clos, 2001)
23 2.4.1.5 SOCIAL/CULTURAL Not all citizens of Barcelona were happy that the Olympics were happening. In fact, 15% of the residents left the city for the sixteen days that the events were occurring. (Preuss, 2000) The attitude has changed, as during the 10th anniversary, 40,000 people gathered in the stadium located in Montjuic to celebrate the anniversary. (Daly and Fickling, 2002) Overall, the Games had improved the community spirit and increased the social integration through the volunteer programs. (Chappelet, 2003, pg. 61) There were a total of 34,548 volunteers participating in the 1992 Olympics. (Heinemann, 2003, pg. 189) The society’s relationship with sport grew stronger, as sport was better understood, and citizens were inspired by both international and national athletes. (Kidd, 2003, pg. 142)
To keep track of all of the historical information regarding the preparation of the Olympics and the events itself, the IOC Olympics Studies Center had teamed up with Autonomous University of Barcelona Olympic Studies Center. They created the Olympic Studies International Directory. (Bianchi, 2003, pg. 356) Furthermore, there is a museum located under the Olympic Stadium containing various memorabilia. 10,000 school children visit this museum yearly to learn about the history and be inspired by the athletic performances. This also helps maintain the educational legacy of the Games. (Binder, 2003, pg. 378)
As previously mentioned, one of the goals of the Generalitat was to spread the awareness of the Catalan culture worldwide. Since Catalonia struggled to achieve recognition outside of the Western Europe, the Games provided a great stage to show off Barcelona to the rest of the world. The result of the Games was more than the Generalitat expected (Elwes, 2015).
In a study conducted by Moragas, Rivenburgh and Garcia the effect of the Olympics on the Catalan identity was examined. The study consisted of an analysis of broadcasts of the Opening Ceremony in 25 different countries with various locations, economic developments and media systems (1995, pg 8). The results are represented in table 5. It’s evident that the Catalan culture was presented to the world.
24 Table 5: Recognition of Catalan Political and Cultural Symbols Commentary References % Of broadcasts # Of broadcasts Refer to Catalonia as a nation or politically autonomous region 32% 8/25 Refer to the Catalan anthem 60% 15/25 Refer to the Catalan flag 100% 25/25 Refer to the Catalan language 68% 17/25 Refer to the "sardana" performance as Catalan folklore 76% 19/25 Refer to the "human pyramids" as Catalan folklore or tradition 80% 20/25 Name Jordi Pujol as the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia 64% 16/25 Refer to Catalonia as having a distinct history 56% 14/25 Source: adopted from Moragas, Rivenburgh and Garcia, 1995, pg. 11
The Olympics were a great opportunity for further development of Barcelona, which the city took an advantage of. Legacy can be seen the urban, tourism, sports, economic and social/cultural transformations. There was a clear urban development, which helped increase the tourism industry, affecting the local economy. Sports have become part of life and the rest of the world was made aware of the Catalan culture. However, there has been a lack of research into this topic after 2006 and whether the Smart City movement can be considered as part of the Olympic legacy.
25 3. METHODOLOGY
While conducting a thorough research into the Olympics, I noticed that there was a lack of recent reports/articles regarding the impacts of the Olympics of 1992. Majority of the latest research was published through 2004-2006, nothing in this decade. Therefore, I decide to investigate and to fill in the gap with the use of primary research.
I decided that the best approach is personal interviews in combination with secondary research and published statistics. Table 6 below summarizes ten interviews that I have conducted and explains the relevance of each interviewee.
Table 6: Personal interviews and their importance Name of interviewee Occupation Relevance Date of interview Xavier Castillo Ferrer Director of Electronics, Xavier has deep understanding of the topic due to April 7th, 2016 entrepreneurship and his professional career in technology management. new ventures at He grew up in Barcelona and is the professor of AMETIC and subjects based around technology. professor Josep Pique Executive President at Josep is the former CEO of the 22@ district. April 12th, 2016 La Salle Technova Ramon Martín de Researcher/Smart City Ramon not only has a PhD in the Smart City area, Pozuelo Genís Coordinator at La Salle but he is also the coordinator of the Smart City April 13th, 2016 postgraduate at La Salle, and so has deep understanding about the subject Didier Grimaldi Consultant at ITIMES Didier’s professional life focuses around IT April 28th, 2016 Advisers and professor consulting and he’s writing his doctoral thesis about Smart Cities. Aidana Zhumadilova Founders of TempEmp Aidana and Nabil are international students that and Nabil Herzi and graduated from European University in Barcelona April 28th, 2016 and returned to Barcelona to launch their start-up Jonathan Zimnoch Consult at Comet Jonathan decided to return to Barcelona to start his April 29th, 2016 Global Consulting professional career after spending one semester in Barcelona for exchange. Paul Canning Founder of PC Paul is the founder of two companies which were May 11th, 2016 Exhibitions and Intern- launched in Barcelona and London. Tech Elizabeta Garcia Sponsorship manager Elizabeta played a huge role in the development of May 18th, 206 at Open Camp Open Camp at the Olympic Stadium. Mohsen Far CEO of SIMBIM Mohsen decided to do his doctoral thesis in May 23rd, 2016 Solutions Barcelona and ended up founding a company in Barcelona. Zhanna Go International Manager Zhanna is a Russian student at La Salle and works May 26th, 2016 at Technova for a company that helps startups in Barcelona.
26 Clearly there are weaknesses and strengths in every form of research. The following two tables describe the positive and negative aspects of conducting a personal interview. Table 7 explains the positive aspects and table 8 describes the negative aspects and how I have overcome them.
Table 7: Positive aspects of personal interviews Aspects Explanation Pick interviewees I had the chance to personally pick the interviewees that I believed would benefit my thesis the most. Create questions Not only was I in charge of creating the questions, I had the and follow-up opportunity to ask follow-up questions and for the interviewee to clarify what I didn’t fully understand.
Table 8: Negative aspects of personal interviews and solutions Aspect Explanation Solution Bias Every interviewee has The same/similar questions were asked their own biases which to different interviewees to get different may affect my findings. opinions. Limited knowledge Not every interviewee is Questions were customized for each expert in all of the topics interviewee. Also additional material, regarding Barcelona and such as recent books/articles/statistics Smart Cities. were used to complement the research. Limited connections Not being an expert in the After each interview, I asked the field, I did not have all of interviewees for contact of anyone that the connections necessary could benefit my research. I also used for my thesis. by university and work connections.
4. BARCELONA 2006-2016
In Mega-event cities: Urban Legacies of Global Sports Events, Viehoff & Poyner argue that a city that hosts a global event such as the Olympics faces two challenges. Both of these challenges are dealing with “updating the idea of urban regeneration” and are:
1. The transformation is not just for the event itself, but should be a catalyst for change for the city as a whole. 2. The transformation is not a done deal, but the city needs to constantly develop.
(2015, pg. 20)
Barcelona has managed to deal with the first challenge quite successfully. As discussed previously in chapter 2, Barcelona took full advantage of the Olympics and developed the city as a whole. Overall, the image of the city has improved and
27 tourism increased; there was economic improvement as well as social and cultural transformation. The city has become popular as a sporting destination, due to these cultural and urban changes. The Games has provided a platform for growth for the city.
The second challenge, dealing with constant improvements and adaptations, is evident today, as cities are confronted with multiple challenges regarding economic, social and environmental sustainability. At the same time, with the advent of mobile technologies and improved connectivity, new solutions are emerging to tackle the challenges of sustainable development. Some cities, such as Barcelona, began to adopt a Smart City strategy.
4.1 BARCELONA’S SMART CITY STRATEGY
Prior to explaining the further development of Barcelona as an international city, it’s essential to understand what a “Smart City” is. According to the Smart Cities Council, there is no single universally agreed definition. Ajuntament de Barcelona defines Smart City as a city “that works to improve the quality of its citizens' lives by guaranteeing sustainable social, economic and urban development”.
In order to be a Smart City, Barcelona has a vision consisting of several attributes. The city’s goal is to become “self-sufficient, with productive neighborhoods, living at a human speed and producing zero emissions.” At the same time, the city strives to be innovative, open and inclusive full of entrepreneurs and organized groups. The aspects of the Smart City strategy include developments in public/social services, environment, mobility, business/companies, tourism, infrastructures, international projects, research/innovation, communication and citizen cooperation. ("Smart City Areas ")
4.2 LEGACY: MOVING TOWARDS SMART CITY
The legacy of the Summer Olympics of 1992 were explained and analyzed in the literature review, but what has been happening in Barcelona since then? The following sections will primarily focus on Barcelona’s development from 2006 to 2016 in terms of the urban, social/cultural, sports, tourism and economic legacies and Barcelona’s path to becoming a Smart City.
28 4.2.1 URBAN The initiatives that Barcelona took to be a Smart City came in three different phases: infrastructure, business and citizens (Grimaldi, Didier. Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016). The infrastructure is the foundation of the Smart City. It consists of roads, airport, transportation, etc., many of which was improved for the Olympic Games. After the Games took place, Catalonia displayed high spending in R&D compared to Spain as a whole. Figure 4 provides an overview of the gross domestic expenditure on R&D relative to the GDP
Figure 4: Catalonia’s and Spain’s Gross domestic expenditure on R&D relative to the GDP
Source: adopted from idescat - Gross domestic expenditure on R&D relative to the GDP 2016
Part of the R&D spending in Catalonia took place in the 22@ district, a relatively new district, located in Poblenou. It’s the “start” of Barcelona’s path to be a Smart City. According to Josep Pique, “The 22@ is the real legacy of the Olympics. By taking an advantage of the Olympics infrastructure, 22@ was built” (Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016)
4.2.1.1 PHASE 1- INFRASTRUCTURE The construction of the 22@ district began in 2000, just a few years after the Olympics. The regeneration turned the area, which was primarily unused factories, into new modern buildings. According to Josep Pique, who was involved in the deindustrialization of the area, there were smart regulations for the construction of the new buildings. It was important to have laws/regulations, as there were only 114
29 blocks available in the city center that needed to be used the most efficient way. The funding followed the “Barcelona Model” previously explained, as the investment came from mixed public-private capital. (Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016)
The goal was to transform the industrial land, to a knowledge-based-industrial land. The construction of the buildings was very different to what Barcelona was accustomed to. Typically, for every meter squared, the building is two meters high. In the case of 22@, these two meters increased to 2.7m. This results in higher buildings. However, they were also “skinnier”, as only 70% of the floor could be used for the building itself. The remaining 30% were distributed among social housing, green spaces and universities. (Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016) A simple diagram demonstrating the construction of the building can be seen in figure 5.
Figure 5: Construction regulations of 22@
Source: Pique, Josep. Personal interview. 12 Apr 2016
Clusters were a key component while developing 22@. The goal was “not only to develop Smart City, but also knowledge-economy”. Therefore the strategy was to create different clusters: media, energy, medical health, IT and design. Each cluster consist of different parties, such as large companies, smaller companies, institutions, universities, technological centers, incubators, etc. (Pique, Josep. Personal interview. 12 Apr 2016). By including other members besides purely companies, Barcelona was better set up to be a Smart City as more members of the society were included in the industry.
30 22@ district was also different because throughout construction, the architects and engineers were planning ahead, anticipating future needs. Underground galleries and tunnels were created below the streets, so that in the future the city can add new fibers or whatever else is needed for more efficiency. (Pique, Josep. Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016)
Resources were also taken into consideration, as they are scarce due to the energy crisis. It’s difficult and very expensive to change the heating and cooling systems in all of the buildings of Barcelona. Therefore, while constructing the new buildings of the 22@ district, it was important to keep them energy-efficient. To do so, energy sensors able to create heat and energy were placed around the central points of the buildings. These points were connected to a central heating, which distributed the energy. The cooling system is also central, and works the same way (Martin De Pozuelo Genis, Ramon. Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2016)
Mohsen Far, the founder of SIMBIM, had an office in Almogavers Business Factory, one of the main buildings of the 22@ district. Just like many other buildings, this building was an old factory that was renovated and many Smart facilities were added to it. For example, the building generated all of its own electricity. (Personal Interview. 23 May 2016).
Mohsen also had access to the open labs, which are inside the 22@ district and in other parts of the city to attract more businesses. People can go in the fabrication labs and test their technologies. These labs have 3D printers so that the companies can make their own pieces, think about their own innovations and how they can bring it to the market. The fabrication labs also foster collaborations and synergies between different companies, as everyone is encouraged to work together. (Martin De Pozuelo Genis, Ramon. Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2016)
4.2.1.2 PHASE 2 – ATTRACTING BUSINESSES The second phase is to attract businesses. In order to be recognized worldwide as a Smart City, Barcelona needed to host major international businesses. With the use of the infrastructure created, Barcelona managed to become the headquarters for companies such as Schneider, Cisco and GDF (Grimaldi, Didier. Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016). In fact, over 5,700 companies from abroad have their headquarters in
31 Catalonia. (Barcelona Activa. Barcelona Data Sheet 2015). Large companies don’t generate too much employment for the locals, as they outsource to countries with cheaper labor. Therefore, Barcelona needed to attract many SME and start-ups. (Grimaldi, Didier. Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016)
Overall, Barcelona was very successful in drawing new companies to the 22@ district, as more than 1,500 new companies moved in. The area is providing the opportunity for “entrepreneurs to develop new applications/products, to evaluate the prototypes in terms of clusters.” (Pique, Josep. Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016). 22@ not only became one of the biggest incubators of ICT start-ups for Spain, for Catalonia but for the entire Europe. (Grimaldi, Didier. Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016). On a larger scale, the Catalonia region managed to attract 3,801 (24.1% of Spain’s) innovative companies. (Barcelona Activa - Barcelona Data Sheet 2015)
Besides attracting businesses, Barcelona also obtained 502 Greenfield foreign investment projects, becoming tenth in the world for attracting the most FDI between 2010 and 2014. (KPMG) Barcelona was also ranked first in FDI Strategy in “Major European Cities of the Future 2016/2017” by fDi Magazine (Fingar, 2016). This clearly demonstrates Barcelona’s success in attracting investment as well as international and local companies becoming a business hotspot.
4.2.1.3 PHRASE 3 - CITIZENS The last phase, according to Grimaldi, that Barcelona is taking in terms of becoming a Smart City is “Citizens”. This phase deals with how the citizens can be impacted, be entrepreneurs, generate start-ups and have jobs. Grimaldi believes that the goal of a smart city is to improve the quality of life of the citizens. A way to do so is to “give them jobs” (Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016).
From the 1,500 new companies that moved into the 22@ district, 44,600 new jobs were created. As Pique explains, it’s “important to understand what knowledge- economy transformation is”. Although 44,600 new jobs were created, it resulted in nearly 90,000 new work placements. This means, “for every knowledge worker, you have a service job, for instance, hotels, restaurants” which results in more employment (Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016)
32 The quality of life is also affected by the quality of the transportation, as people tend to be more satisfied if the transportation is efficient and if they are well connected with their works and rest of the city. The highways and roads that were built for the Olympics continue to be improved, and according to Genis, the mobility in Barcelona has improved greatly. Both public and private transportation has been linked with technology, as the citizens are provided with real-time schedules. (Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2016)
The public transport schedule is available on mobile phones as well as on many of the bus stops. The bus lines are also being altered to make them efficient and easier to use for both citizen and tourists and are replaced with electric/hybrid buses. By better connecting different areas of the city, the crime rate is reduced and locals have more opportunities to get jobs, as they are better connected the city (Martin De Pozuelo Genis, Ramon. Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2016)
Barcelona's Bicing bike sharing system is becoming more popular as well, as more citizens have signed up for the service. It is an environmentally friendly and efficient way to commute. Jonathan Zimnoch, a U.S. expat that moved to Barcelona to start his career stated, “I use the service every day, to and from work, and so far, have had little to no problems with it. It’s very easy to use and there are stations all over the city. In addition, designated bike lanes make journeys safe and speedy.” Bicing also has a mobile app, meaning that the users can see all of the bike stations and availability. By tracking all of the bikes, Bicing can see where the demand is higher, and deliver the bikes to the stations accordingly. (Personal Interview. 29 Apr. 2016).
For those that use their own cars to get around the city, parking has also become easier. According to Genis, all of the parking zones are linked to an app, which the car owner can use to pay for the parking, without physically going to the parking meter and inserting money. It makes the parking process much more efficient, as the driver can also see what parking spaces are available. (Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2016)
High-quality public/private transportation systems are one of the steps in becoming a Smart City and contribute to the fact that Barcelona was ranked 10th city in connectivity in “Major European Cities of the Future 2016/2017” (Fingar, 2016) To
33 take this concept further, Smart Cities also need citizens to be Smart. According to Pique, “the citizens are the best sensors that we have”. That’s because the citizens are the ones that are using the city. By obtaining the information about the people, by knowing the habits, it’s easier to optimize the city for the citizen. (Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016)
Phases 2 (attracting businesses) and 3 (citizens) will be discussed further in this study.
4.2.2 SOCIAL/CULTURAL + GOVERNMENT As was explained in the first part of the thesis, the City Hall and the Catalan culture are intertwined. The government plays a huge role in deciding whether Barcelona will/won’t attempt to become a Smart City, as they need to put certain actions in place. The mayor and City Hall need to decide if this transformation will be the priority, or if there are other aspects of the city or problems that they would rather focus on.
As seen in the table 9 below, each mayor has different goals and different focuses for the development of Barcelona. Maragall managed to obtain the Olympics for Barcelona and Clos began the regeneration of Poblenou. The concept of Smart City was introduced by Hereu and further developed by Trias. Trias was so dedicated in Barcelona becoming a Smart City, that he even got Barcelona ranked 4th Smart City in the world. This resulted in him being ranked as the 49th most important, powerful person in the World according to Forbes Magazine. (Grimaldi, Didier. Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016).
Table 9: Mayors of Barcelona and their main focus Years Mayor’s name Main focus 1982 – 1997 Pasquel Maragall i Mira Olympics 1992 1997 – 2006 Joan Clos i Matheu 22@ 2006 – 2011 Jordi Hereu i Boher Smart City 2011 – 2015 Xavier Trias i Vidal de Llobatera. Smart City 2015 – present Ada Colau I Ballano Social issues Source: Pique, Josep. Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016
Colau is the current mayor and her priority is not for Barcelona to become a Smart City. Instead Colau is focused on creating a more balanced society and
34 diminishing the difference between the rich and the poor. (Castillo Ferrer, Xavier. Personal interview. 7 April 2016) Genis has the same perception of the new City Hall, as he argues that, “the new government, the left party, wants to focus especially on social intercessions and social aspects of the city…they want to focus on the common citizens that are living here in Barcelona.” (Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2016)
Looking back, the former mayor Trias managed to align the people and establish various collaborations between the companies. He also managed to initiate the projects between enterprises and universities. (Grimaldi, Didier. Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016). Even though the new government might not focus on developing those type of collaborations, they will remain and continue to function without the need for any intervention. (Martin De Pozuelo Genis, Ramon. Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2016)
Apart from supporting the collaborations, the former City Hall also established entities that help startups enter the market. According to Mohsen Far, the CEO of SIMBIM Solutions, there are two different types of supports that the government offers. Start-ups can either get financial funds or endorsement/incentives. Far received few incentives for his company, such as easier access to professional resources at a lower fee and recognition in the local market. SIMBIM also has the ability to use Barcelona Active facilities. The company was in the 22@ district for three years and now have an office in the Parc Tecnologic, free of charge. (Personal Interview. 23 May 2016).
Far believes that incentives are the best kind of help that the government can offer to start-ups. He stated that, “there are opportunities, they are open to everyone, they are possible to access, but are you able to get them or no? If you are able to get it, then you are welcome. If you are not, then sorry.” (Personal Interview. 23 May 2016) This attitude portrays how the city is very competitive, but at the same time the best ideas have a chance to become reality.
Another initiative that Barcelona is part of is the City Protocol. Together with enterprises, research centers and universities in cities such as Amsterdam, Kyoto and Chicago, Barcelona takes part in a forum for discussing and presenting agreements on how a city should be run. It is an important initiative to be part of, as Barcelona can learn from others and others can learn from Barcelona. It also provides a great
35 platform for sharing various ideas (Martin De Pozuelo Genis, Ramon. Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2016)
The Smart City Expo is another platform that Barcelona is a part of and is hosting. It’s an international event organized by Fira de Barcelona occurring every November. Over 400 city representatives attend and learn how Barcelona is developing the Smart City strategy. It’s an occasion “for making reflections about the strategy of Smart City of all the cities of the world.” (Pique, Josep. Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016) It’s important that Barcelona is hosting such global events, as Smart City Expo and Mobile World Congress, as it helps with the image of Barcelona and provides an opportunity to further develop in terms of becoming an international Smart City.
It’s essential to teach the future generations about the various technologies available to spread the Smart City knowledge. Apart from being the CEO of SIMBIM, Far also founded a postgraduate program at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya for Smart Cities. The postgraduate degree focuses around BIM technology and its role in data collection/data aggregation. He teaches the students how to be able to run different simulations for preparing a good database for a planning system as well as being connected to the BIM applications. (Far, Mohsen. Personal Interview. 23 May 2016).
University La Salle Ramon Llull also offers a postgraduate degree in Smart Cities. This postgraduate program focuses on the Smart City ecosystem. It consists of four topics in technologies: sustainability and energy sustainability, data networks and security, monitoring systems and information/control systems, and smart building. Prior to finishing their degree, students need to complete a thesis focusing on a real challenge that is presented by the City Council. (Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2016)
In La Salle the students also have the possibility to complement this degree with another postgraduate in Smart Grids. The second degree also focuses on real situations and students are taught through industry examples. Students that complete both postgraduates obtain a Master of Smart Grids and Technologies. (Martin De Pozuelo Genis, Ramon. Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2016)
36 Technova Young is another initiation of La Salle. It is a “club” where young entrepreneurs come together to share their ideas, gain more knowledge and inspiration. According to Zhanna Go, a former member, “it’s an important institution young entrepreneurs to visit, as they gain more experience that can’t be obtained by just studying in university” (Personal Interview. 26 May 2016). It’s important to foster such attitude at a young age, as it promotes the knowledge-based economy, the entrepreneur behavior and the global perspective. (Pique, Josep. Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016)
Technova is a separate entity from Technova Young previously described. Technova helps start-ups starting from their first idea to form the business model, go to market and eventually even to go abroad. Zhanna Go, the International Manager at Technova, is in charge of bringing start-ups from all around the world to Barcelona. (Go, Zhanna. Personal Interview. 26 May 2016)
European University of Barcelona also helps promote the entrepreneurial attitude. The founders of TempEmp, an app that helps connect talented people with those searching for that talent, Aidana Zhumadilova and Nabil Herzi, launched their company in Barcelona after finishing their undergraduate degrees. The main reason why they decided to launch the start-up in Barcelona was because it was where the members met and because of the support that they are receiving from their university. (Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016).
Zhumadilova and Herzi aren’t the only foreigners moving to Catalonia. Many young individuals are relocating to Barcelona for universities or to start their professional careers. Figure 6 demonstrates the increase of foreign population in Catalonia in comparison to Spain.
37 Figure 6: Percentage of foreign population in Catalonia and Spain (2001–2015)
Source: Idescat - Percentage of Foreign Population
Zhanna Go moved to Barcelona for her bachelor’s degree, as she believed that she would have “lot of opportunities in terms of studying and in terms of working.” (Personal Interview. 26 May 2016) Jonathan Zimnoch on the other hand, graduated in New York and moved to Barcelona to search for a job. He believed that Barcelona would provide him with a better quality life and started a career in information technology. He’s working for Comet Global Consulting, based in the 22@ district. (Zimnoch, Jonathan. Personal Interview. 29 Apr 2016) It’s important that Barcelona has many international young individuals coming, as they help with the internationalization of the city and the expansion of businesses.
4.2.3 SPORTS It’s very common that many of the facilities built for the Olympics are either not used for their initial purpose or aren’t used at all. In the case of Barcelona, many of the facilities have remained for the use of the public or are being leased by a club. Appendix 11 summarizes the use of the main facilities in 1992 and today.
Until recently, the Olympic Stadium wasn’t used to its full potential. It’s very costly to keep a large structure maintained and overtime it degrades. Furthermore, it can’t host large professional sporting events like the Olympics on frequent basis. Instead it was used for events such as concerts, unrelated to sports. Elisabet Garcia took part in resolving this issue as the Sponsorship Manager for Open Camp. The goal of this project was to reopen the Olympic facilities to the general public in the form of a theme park, and it opened on June 2016. However instead of rollercoasters, visitors
38 are able to practice sports on high-standard facilities. “It will provide a change for anyone to feel like an Olympic athlete for a day and experience the same things as an Olympic athlete” (Garcia, Elisabet. Personal Interview. 18 May 2016)
Visitors are able to try their hand at some sports such as baseball, triathlons, archery, football, and even Paralympic sports. The premises also hosts various shows and concerts, and has restaurants and sport/team shops. The largest Olympic museum is in the area, where the visitors are able to learn about the history of the Olympics. (Garcia, Elisabet. Personal Interview. 18 May 2016). Table 10 summarizes the benefits for stakeholders.
Table 10: Summary of the benefits of Open Camp for various stakeholders Stakeholder Benefit Costumers Personally experience practicing sport on Olympic facilities. Sporting industry Opportunity to spread the awareness of less known sports. Government Able to optimize the unused space and benefit from the facilities that were already installed and no longer need to worry/pay for the maintenance of the facility. Sporting companies Have a platform to test out new products in an innovative way. Source: Garcia, Elisabet. Personal Interview. 18 May 2016
Open Camp is a revolutionary idea, which further helps develop the legacy of the Olympic Games and the organizers are already planning on opening more theme parks like that. The goal is to have one Open Camp in each continent. Therefore, the Open Camp in Barcelona will be the only Open Camp in Europe. (Garcia, Elisabet. Personal Interview. 18 May 2016).
Barcelona was picked to be the first location of Open Camp for multiple reasons. The Olympic facilities have strategic location and Barcelona itself attracts seven billion tourists yearly. It’s a very creative and innovative city that is well connected and internationally recognized. Additionally, the venues were very well conserved which made Barcelona an ideal location. (Garcia, Elisabet. Personal Interview. 18 May 2016).
Projects like Open Camp fit into the bigger picture of Catalonia’s sporting industry. The area has over 500 companies connected to sports (70% of the Spanish production) making it the territory with the “greatest concentration of sports
39 businesses in Europe”. This has resulted in a turnover of €4billion, which accounts for 2.1% of the overall Catalan GDP. (INDESCAT)
4.2.4 TOURISM If successful, Open Camp will have an impact on further increasing the tourism of Barcelona, which is already an issue. As seen in figure 7, the number of passengers landing in Barcelona has been constantly increasing, except for the decrease during the recession. Dan Hancox, author for The Guardian explain the situation, “Barcelona has become a victim of its own success.” (2016) The main issue is that Barcelona is a relatively small city, and the major attractions, such as Sagrada Familia, are located in residential areas. Therefore, citizens have firsthand contact with tourists and their daily routines are affected by the touristic industry. (Hancox, 2016)
Figure 7: Airplane passengers landing in El Prat (2006- 2015)
Source: Aena, 2016
Colau believes that “There’s a sense that Barcelona could risk losing its soul. We need to seek a fair balance between the best version of globalization, and keeping the character, identity and life of the city. This is what makes it attractive – it’s not a monumental city, and it’s not a world capital like Paris – its main feature is precisely its life, its plurality, its Mediterranean diversity.” (Hancox, 2016) Therefore, lots of the focus of the new City Hall is on tourism, as opposed to attracting more foreign investment and building a smart city.
Colau wants to build a more sustainable business model for the city in order to save it from “being taken over by foreigners” (Martin De Pozuelo Genis, Ramon.
40 Personal interview. 13 Apr 2016). The city is doing so by capping the number of foreign investors in the tourism industry and making it harder for foreigners to purchase/invest in the hotel business. (Zhumadilova & Herzi. Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016)
The City Hall had announced that there would be a touristic tax for the tourists that don’t stay overnight, such as cruisers and day-trippers. Colau had also disrupted more than thirty planned hotel projects and fined AirBnB and Homeaway €60,000 each, as they were advertising illegal tourist apartments (not registered apartments). In order to make everything possible, Colau even founded a new Tourism Council. (Dan Hancox, 2016)
Although tourism is affecting the daily life of the locals, it’s also the source of revenue for many of them. Ricardo Ramos, spokesman for the Barcelona Association of Neighbors and Hosts, which is supported by AirBnb, explained, “For the majority of people sharing their home, it’s about making ends meet. We have pensioners who are trying to pay the mortgage, or rent, and live on €400 a month – and that’s impossible in Barcelona. Some of these people would be on the streets within two months, without that extra income.” According to an AirBnb study in 2014, over 50% of the hosts in Barcelona use AirBnb to pay their mortgage, rent or bills. Besides generating €128m, it also created 4,000 new jobs. (Dan Hancox, 2016)
In addition, the tourism industry also increased the cost of rent for the locals. Evictions are becoming more common because the locals can no longer afford to live in their neighborhoods. (Hancox, 2016) According to Herzi, many locals are even selling their businesses, such as bars, to foreigners. Colau commented, “Any city that sacrifices itself on the altar of mass tourism will be abandoned by its people when they can no longer afford the cost of housing, food and basic everyday necessities.” (Hancox, 2016)
As a result of, many neighborhoods demonstrate dissatisfaction in different ways. The neighborhood of Barceloneta is an example of such behavior. The area used to be a working-class fishing district, until the beach was built and the area was regenerated for the Olympics. Today it’s a popular area for tourism, filled with expensive shops, restaurants and rickshaw drivers. Besides displaying the barrio flags
41 (blue and yellow with a crest of a lighthouse and a boat) some of the locals also have another flag with the slogan “Cap pis turistic” (No tourist flats). (Dan Hancox, 2016)
4.2.5 ECONOMIC Besides the growth in the tourism industry, economy had transformed into a knowledge-based economy. This means that the raw material of the economy became talent and knowledge. Barcelona Activa estimated that at the end of 2014, 29.7% of companies located in Barcelona were engaged in knowledge-intensive sectors and that 54.1% were salaried workers. (Barcelona Data Sheet 2015) Districts such as 22@ and initiatives like Barcelona Activa contribute to the growth of such industry. (Pique, Josep. Personal interview. 12 Apr. 2016)
However not everyone believes that the transformation towards deindustrialization is what’s best for Barcelona. Castillo believes that the city should be reindustrialized, meaning that industrial companies should return to the region. He argues that the three main pillars of the Catalan industry are agriculture, pharmaceuticals and car manufacturing and that technology is merely a tool, enabler to those sectors allowing them to grow. (Personal interview. 7 April 2016)
Far researched heavily in 2011/2012 when decided whether to move to Barcelona or other city like Vienna/Nottingham to complete his doctorate project. He analyzed the cities in terms of transportation/urban systems, economical situations, business opportunities, etc. Although Spain was in the peak of the financial crises, Far admired Barcelona’s ability to survive without much impact. Based on his findings, Far decided to move to Barcelona, as he believed it would be the best location for his project and future opportunities (ex. his own company – SIMBIM Solutions). (Far, Mohsen. Personal Interview. 23 May 2016)
Meanwhile, unemployment level is still relatively high, although there are many initiatives to boost the employment. As seen in the figure 8, Barcelona’s unemployment has been increasing until 2013, and since then it has decreased. It’s important to take into consideration that Barcelona’s (in blue) unemployment has always been below Spain’s (red line) overall unemployment.
42 Figure 8: Barcelona’s vs. Spain’s unemployment rate (2001-2015)
Source: adopted from idescat – unemployment rate 2016
Start-ups like Intern-Tech and TempEmp bring young talent to Barcelona. Intern-Tech aims to bring international students to Barcelona and London for internship placements. The founder, Paul Canning, stated that his company was launched in Barcelona, because the city “has been developing technologically, as more companies from abroad are coming to set up their offices here, so there is more demands for interns”. So far, Canning has experience with students from US, Greece, Holland and Canada. (Canning, Paul. Personal Interview. 11 May 2016)
TempEmp is an app helping connect people with their ideal jobs. It has two main functions. TempTask, which is connecting those with special talent with those in need for that talent, and TempJob, which provides a more formal, short-term employment. One of the major reasons why this company was founded in Barcelona is because the founder saw the city as a “dynamic and vibrant job market”. (Zhumadilova & Herzi. Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016)
Companies like Intern-Tech and TempEmp, are part of the start-up movement and contribute to Barcelona’s developing entrepreneurial image. According to Barcelona Activa (Barcelona Data Sheet 2015) Barcelona province has higher early stage Entrepreneurial Activity rate (TEA) than the Spanish average (7.3% vs. 5.5%). The TEA is even higher than in countries such as Sweden, Germany and France.
Herzi from TempEmp, commented that “is the time to be in Barcelona…in a couple of years it will catch up with London and it might be too late to start a company”. (Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2016) Mohsen Far also made a comparison
43 between Barcelona and London. He believes that Barcelona is a “young entrepreneur” and London is an “old entrepreneur”. He also commented that Barcelona “has its own identity, its own position not just in Spain, not just in Europe but internationally” (Far, Mohsen. Personal Interview. 23 May 2016)
5. CONCLUSION
Prior to the Olympics, in the early 1990s, Barcelona was a city rooted in industry. In order to develop and increase in popularity, a catalyst was required. Olympics were the opportunity to place a change in motion and to begin the transformation that Barcelona so desperately needed. As Franco’s era ended, the region of Catalonia needed revival of Catalan culture, a transformation of political structure, repositioning of the city, economic foreign and domestic investment and new infrastructure.
Olympics of 1992 provided an opportunity for Barcelona and began a transformation, which is still visible twenty-four years later. Various legacies portray how a platform was set up for Barcelona’s further development. The major legacies include urban, sport, tourism, economic and social/cultural. Although the legacy is less evident as time passes, as it’s more difficult to make the direct connections. Barcelona is benefitting from hosting the international sporting event even until this day.
The urban legacy is perhaps the most obvious Olympic legacy as the changes are most visible. Urban transformation continued as the Olympics ended, with the regeneration of the Poblenou district and creation of 22@, Barcelona’s Smart City hub. The area was reconstructed using the Barcelona Model, private-public form of investment introduced during the Olympics. Continuing the expansion of the airport, metro, rail system, commercial port and Rondas increased the city’s connectivity, attracting more foreigners and creating the infrastructures necessary for the basis of a Smart City.
Sporting facilities that are left can either be destroyed, eventually deteriorate by themselves or be further used. Majority of the 1992 facilities remained, pushing sport to become part of everyday life. Barcelona has since hosted many sporting events and is home to sport companies. Open Camp, the first amusement-style park,
44 incorporates technology with sport, providing an opportunity for companies to test their products in an innovative way.
Although it’s difficult to state how Open Camp will affected the tourism of Barcelona, being recently opened, it’s certain that the Olympics had worked as a catalyst for creation of the tourism sector. The image of Barcelona was changed, as the city not only became one of the top touristic destinations, but also a business center. Being the Mobile World Capital and hosting events such as the Mobile World Congress and Smart City Expo, places Barcelona on the world’s stage for being an innovative and smart city.
The city was positioned by the Games and this has been maintained through the tourism and events sectors in the city and Barcelona marketing efforts. Due to such exposure, Barcelona is able to attract foreign and domestic investment, allowing further development of the city and its industries. It was also the main cause of the transformation from an industrial city to one with knowledge-based economy. International and national companies are opening offices in Barcelona providing jobs for the locals. Start-ups are able thrive as the local government initiatives are providing benefits and incentives, creating Barcelona’s entrepreneurial identity known worldwide.
The entrepreneurial image is further fostered in local universities, as programs focusing on Smart Cities and technologies are available to educate the future generations. Composition of the city has changed, as more international student/companies/professional are moving to Barcelona to study/work. Simultaneously, the quality of life is improving with the help of technology that’s slowly mended into everyday life. Traffic, which has been an increasing issue as more people are moving to Barcelona, has been resolved with the help of technologies like Bicing, smart traffic lights, parking apps and the transparency of public transport information.
Therefore it’s evident that the Olympic legacy not only lives on, but also further effects the development of Barcelona. The extent and the direction that the legacy takes depend on the government, as they are the ones that chose the path. The Olympics were a result of mayor Maragall, and mayor Clos began to regenerate the Poblenou area known as 22@, mayor Hereu introduced the Smart City concept and
45 mayor Trias further developed it. Unlike the previous mayors that focused on bringing technology into Barcelona and establishing grounds for the city to be “Smart”, mayor Colau is taking a turn and concentrating on the social aspects.
To conclude, the extent to which Barcelona is a Smart City is questionable, mainly due to the change in the government. Until now, Barcelona was in the right path, however Colau has brought the whole concept into question with her re- orientation towards social equality among the citizens of the city. Barcelona is a ‘smarter city’ and much of the city’s developments over the past decade have happened on the ‘Olympic platform’ that was created for 1992.
Even if Colau doesn’t continue to lead Barcelona towards being “Smart”, the city has the foundation and mindset needed to become a frontrunner in the Smart City movement. The economic investment together with the mindset of the society will determine if Barcelona will truly move towards being a smart city. None of this would be possible without the Summer Olympics of 1992.
46 REFERENCES
"1939-1975: The University of Barcelona under the Franco Dictatorship."Universidad De Barcelona. Universitat De Barcelona, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.
47 Brown, Graham. "The Impact of Olympic Sponsor Hospitality on Tourism and Business to Business Relationships." The Legacy of the Olympic Games, 1984-2000: International Symposium, Lausanne, 14th, 15th and 16th November 2002. Lausanne, Switzerland: International Olympic Committee, 2003. Print. Brunet, Ferran: “An economic analysis of the Barcelona’92 Olympic Games: resources, financing and impact", in Miquel de Moragas & Miquel Botella, The Keys to Success: the social, sporting, economic and communications impact of Barcelona’92. Barcelona: Servei de Publicacions de la UAB, 1995. Print. Bruet, Ferran. 'Economic Overview of the Sport, Social, Urban and Environmental Impacts and Legacies of the Olympic Games'. Presentation for IX Seminario Nacional Políticas Públicas de Esporte e Lazer. 2010
48 Creuers. "Statistics." Creuers Barcelona. Creuers BCN, n.d. Web. 22 Aug. 2016.
49 Fingar, Courtney, ed. FDi European Cities and Regions of the Future 2016/2017. Rep. The Financial Times, Feb.-Mar. 2016. Web. 26 Aug. 2016.
50 14th, 15th and 16th November 2002. Lausanne, Switzerland: International Olympic Committee, 2003. Print. Kitching, Chris. "Barcelona Residents Say Tourism Is a Bigger Problem than Poverty as New Mayor Ramps up Efforts to Introduce a Cap on Visitors." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 11 July 2015. Web. 24 Mar. 2016.
51 "Municipal Sports Centre - Estació Del Nord." Barcelona Yellow. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Aug. 2016.
52 Symposium, Lausanne, 14th, 15th and 16th November 2002. Lausanne, Switzerland: International Olympic Committee, 2003. Print. Taylor, Adam. "How The Olympic Games Changed Barcelona Forever. "Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 26 July 2012. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.
53 APPENDIX
Appendix 1: Xavier Castillo Ferrer Position: AMETIC, the Spanish Information & Communications Technology (ICT) trade association Date: April 7th, 2016
1) How long did you live in Catalunya/Barcelona? I was born here, I lived here until I was 23 years old and then I went away. I was five years in the United States and then 18 years in Madrid. And then I came back in the year 2000. Since then I was here for 16 years. So it all adds up to 62 years. 2) Did you experience the Olympics? How? When the Olympics were happening I was living in Madrid. So I watched the Olympics on the TV. My relatives were living here, my brother and my parents, so I had a lot of knowledge about what was going on but I was not living here. 3) How would you say the city transformed after it got nominated to host the Olympics? Industries? Infrastructure? Economy? Culture? Yes, that’s correct. There were entire parts of the city [transformed], for instance, where the Olympic Village was build by the shore. Where today you will find the Arts Hotel and the harbor. That was a very depressed part of the city. I mean you could not enter walking alone that part of the city. That has been completely rebuilt, now it’s a very nice part of the city. For instance, the beaches, the beaches were completely abundant, and thanks to the Olympics and the Forum, because not everything was done for the Olympics. For the Olympics the basic infrastructure of the city, like La Ronda de Nadal, La Ronda de Ravage, the governing of some neighborhoods and so on. That was done for the Olympics, but lets say that the impulse of that initiative carried on for many more years. 4) What is your definition of a Smart City? It’s a city that should make a smart use of its resources. 5) What city in the world would you argue is the best example of Smart City? Why? I don’t know. I know that there are many initiatives and that all of the major cities in the world are nowadays having some initiatives to become a smart city but I don’t know which one is leading. 6) Do you believe that Barcelona is an example of Smart City? Why or why not? No. No I don’t think so. There are some initiatives in Barcelona, but I say that they are still far from being an example of a very efficient use of resources, like energy, water, and treatment of waste. I think there is a lot of room for improvement, to be polite. 7) How do you think that Barcelona will develop in terms of being a Smart City? Well it depends. It depends on the governance of the city. It depends on the mayor and the people that surround them. Nowadays we have a new Ada Colau, which was appointed mayor a year ago, I believe. Today I will say that today’s mayor’s priority is not for Barcelona to become a smart city, but to have a more balanced society and to diminish the difference between the richest and the poorest in the city. And also to look for a more rational approach to tourism, for instance. So for Barcelona to become a smart city I wouldn’t say it’s the top priority of the governance.
54 8) How have the industries changed in Barcelona over the years? Barcelona has been traditionally a very industrial city in the 19th and 20th century. Unfortunately, in the last 20 years, this approach about the global economy, about not intervening, has made it a many industrial companies leave. Now both the government in Madrid and the government in Barcelona are talking about reindustrialization, which is trying to get industrial companies back into our territory. Which is a shame, because what they should have done is not to let them leave in the first place. Anyway today the situation is this: Barcelona was a very industrial city for long time, the weight of industry decreased in the last 20/30 years and now they are some efforts being done in order to become part of the industry again. Not only the city of Barcelona but in this area of influence. 9) What about the technology sector? There are many technology companies in Barcelona. Well, in Cataluña in general, the top sectors are: First everything to do with the food industry and agriculture. That’s the one that is honestly going very well. The second is everything related to chemistry and pharmaceuticals and so on. This one is also doing very well. The third one is everything having to do with cars manufacturing, mobility and all the industry. We have two very large factories in Barcelona, near Barcelona, one owned by Volts Wagon, Seat factory in Mantorey and the other is the Nissan factory in Zona Franca. Around these two factories there are a lot of smaller industries, which provide compliments and services for these major manufacturers. So we have between the agro industry plus chemical and pharmaceutical and mobility. I think those are the main three pillars of the Catalan industry and I think it’s a very good, I think they provide a very good base, in order to grow in the future. There is no emphasis on technology as such; I mean technology in Catalonia is the enabler, a tool, for these three sectors to grow. In addition to these three we have others, like textile, content generation for audiovisual and so on. But I would say that in any case we have these three main pillars, then we have the smaller sectors, like textile and audiovisual, but technology as such is not being viewed as a sector in Cataluña. It is being used as a tool, or an enabler, for these other sectors to grow.
Appendix 2: Josep Pique Position: Executive President at La Salle Technova Date: April 12th, 2016
Prior to interview: explanation of 22@ Before the smart city strategy, it was the year 2000 and perhaps you can open a new chapter on 22@, the district of innovation. In the Olympics, the city of Barcelona was arranging different areas, for instance the Olympics Village, Monjuic and different places where we were hosting the Olympics. The Olympic village was very, very important during the Olympics the city. For the Olympics we were opening all the roads, the Rondas, and also we were cleaning the waterfront. It was very important because the way that we ordered the city. But it was for the Olympics. The real legacy of post-Olympics was the 22@. We were developing in terms of urban development.
55 services, but until now we had in the city different services, mobility, energy, waste, water and they were like silos. Not working together. Now that we have Internet of things, we have data of everyone and we can manage in a better way. More than that, now that the citizens, the information that we provide to the citizens, they have mobile, the citizens are the best sensors that we have. At the end of the day they can provide that data for the rest of the citizens and they can use data, public and private data, in order to make decisions on mobility and so on. Now let me go to the 22@ district, just to understand the project of 22@. 22@ was this area (points to where Glories/Poble Nou is). It was organized, this is very important to include in the history: In 1859 we were developing the big Barcelona. The middle- east Barcelona was connected with small towns, like Sarria, Gracia and other towns around the city. This is important to understand that this part, this matrix was creating the model to grow Barcelona. In that moment the city had walls, and the walls were broken. And this is the image of 22@ 150 years ago (points at an image), it is Poble Nou at the end of the day. And the kind of factories that we had in the past became in this case here with obsolete sense, with degradation. In this way the challenge of the Olympics was cleaning the beach, developing the rings, and also developing this area, the Olympic village. And the decision after the Olympics was in one hand: in 2004 we have the Forum. It was an event that was cleaning the river and organizing all of this area. And later the 22@ which was at the end of the day the place where we could develop technology for the smart city. Why? Because the real challenge we had in these 100 blocks in the city center was to use this land in a better way. Imagine that you are in the city, what you can do here? Imagine if we transform all this area as housing, where the people can work? The solution for the city was lets go to use this area as a platform for the knowledge-based economy or for industrial knowledge based economy. If in the past we had all factories, and raw material was at the end of the day textile and so on, now the real raw material of the knowledge based economy is the talent. That is the key word. And to use the city as a platform for the talent, for what? For working and living. In this way the knowledge platform means that it is a platform for knowledge economy and knowledge with IT. You can put here or here (hard or soft on the sketch). But at the end of the day the city will be the platform for the knowledge-built economy in this century. It is the different from the pass when we had cities, which were the place of the freedom. Remember that we were coming from the federalism and that the people went to the cities to find the freedom. And start the traders, the people that were selling, started to develop the activities there. That’s the concept of bourgacy. During the industrial activity, you know that the city as you saw in this pictures, the cities were not the place of the industry; the pollution, big trucks. And during the last century, first the city was losing competitive advantage in front of China or other countries, but also the cities were not really happy with the industry. For all these reasons the industry started to be out of the city. That is important to understand that this empty situation of this kind of land was an opportunity for the cities to rethink what can we do inside the cities. But the key idea is lets go to use the city as a platform for the knowledge economy and knowledge society. And how? Ok.. if we have the smart city, it is a platform, we can develop the economy, and the society. In order to develop that, what 22@ was doing, was: to develop clear smart city strategy; planning, management, infrastructure and building, a clear cluster strategy, this is also to be smart. What kind of smart specialization you have in the city, what kind of clusters: is a media cluster, is a health cluster. What kind of knowledge industrial activities you are doing. What kind of companies you are involving, new companies, big companies or both, and what kind of talent. That is the challenge that the
56 work that we were doing in 22@. In this case the concept of smart cities is not just the infrastructures. It’s also what kind of economy and what kind of society. The situation of Barcelona was first building infrastructures, it means that this is not just smart, but it is also green infrastructures. It is about sustainability. This is about economy and as you know the knowledge economy means that the knowledge is one and that the innovation is one of your axes. And we put near the corporations technological centers, research centers and universities. And also all about the housing and quality of social life. In this way, the smart city of 22@ was a four million meter square formulation. There was a law, a smart regulation of 22@, that was transforming the industrial land, the traditional industrial land, to a knowledge based industrial land. And the way that we were attracting investors was to increase the floor of the buildings. Imagine that you have a land, until now you can put for every square meter, you can create two square meters (2 meter high). In the situation we accepted to increase until 2.7m. It was higher buildings, but in the 70% of the floor. It means that we put all of this area 70%. In the remaining 30% it was used for social housing, green spaces, and also for universities. This is a win-win relationship in order to attract the investors to invest in the buildings but also to get land for the social activates that we wanted. This is the kind of infrastructures that we were doing: mobility, wifi, energy, waste, heating and cooling system. For instance, heating and cooling means that we were using the temperature of the sea for reducing the temperature of the buildings. Or the heating was burning the waste that we had extra. And also we were creating underground galleries. It means galleries and streets under the streets for future services. Imagine that you have one street under the street, it means that you when you open the street to put all the services, you will not open again because you have street below. It means that you can add new fibers or whatever you need. This is the idea of the city as a lab because as we were developing a new district, smart city also means that, we were opening the opportunity for entrepreneurs that were developing new applications on IT, mobility or whatever. They could use the district as a check in for developing products, for evaluating prototypes, in terms of clusters. This is the idea: you have the role of the government, promoting the smart city. The role of the university: transferring technology. The role of the industry: developing new products and new projects. And at the end the citizens, in the center of the smart cities always, the citizen needs and the challenges. The city challenges could be: mobility, could be water… Ok this is about a smart city. Also in this presentation you will have that there is a strategy of clusters. Why? Because we needed to develop not only smart city, but also knowledge economy. For this reason we were developing clusters: media cluster, energy cluster, medical health, IT and design, and you will see in every cluster, we have the same structure. Big companies, institutions, universities, technological centers, incubators, and other facilities. For instance: the project of media, you have the Pompeu University, the Spanish radio, Media Pro, or different incubators, like BarcelonaNatia. Or in the cluster of IT, there is a cluster there, with different universities, also companies like Telefonica, and also institutions like the Mobile World Capital. This is how we were developing the smart city. This is the water company, here you have the streets, plenty of infrastructures, but here you have a technological center, a university, a company. That’s the way we talk about the 22@ as a compact city, but also complex because you are mixing activities, working and living. But why working and living? Because the worker that is working in Lindra, during the lunchtime is a citizen, is a commuter. When he/she is coming back and at 6pm is perhaps is going to teach at the university. It means that you are changing profiles during the day. That’s the idea that we have behind the concept of knowledge city. But housing is a real mix. The energy cluster, the health cluster and the design cluster… ok with all of that you will find in
57 the district more than 1,500 new companies, that were not existing before the transformation, and 44,600 new jobs in the district. This is important to understand what is knowledge economy transformation. But if you count the number of workers, you will find near 90,000. It means that for every knowledge worker, you have a service job, for instance, hotels, restaurants. This is the idea of the different clusters and the smart cities, how you can combine the different sectors, and also now is developing a new area in this area, thinking about smart city campus. New professionals are in the district and you have to manage that. But also new generations of talent is coming. That is the reason why we are working a lot in the schools for promoting the knowledge-based economy, the entrepreneur behavior and the global perspective. 1) How have you experienced the Olympics of 1992? My experience was just in the post Olympics, because during the Olympics I was a student at a university. My activity with the Olympics is more with the 22@ district, the district of the innovation. 2) How do you think the city has changed? (Before being nominated to after the games) I believe that the city has changed because the district of innovation was possible because of the Olympics. The Olympics were creating all of the infrastructure around; the waterfront, the rings around the city. It was a wonderful opportunity to send a message to the world that Barcelona was ready to be one of the top 10 cities. When you are an Olympic city, you have a global brand, which is important. The brand is an opportunity, you have to work and you need to fulfill this brand with the values of not only the sport but with other kinds of values. That’s the reason why you will see that the legacy of the 22@ is the real legacy of the Olympics. By taking an advantage of the Olympics infrastructure, 22@ was built. However the start to the 22@ was the Olympic village. 3) What is your definition of a Smart City? My definition of smart city is a city that is thinking through three different levels, the urban dimension, social dimension and economic dimension. In urban dimension it is developing all of the infrastructure that you need; the water, energy, mobility, waste, and most importantly, the interaction with the citizens. You need to use the citizens as a real sensor for providing to them what they need but also for getting data information from his/her reality in order to share this data with the rest of the citizens. 4) How has Barcelona transformed over time to become a Smart City? You will see that in the last four year/last mandate of chavity as a major, there was a clear strategy on Smart City. I don’t know if you had the opportunity to visit the website of Barcelona Smart City, but there its clear with different projects that are fulfilling all of the activities. 5) When would you say Barcelona started this transformation? Barcelona with the use of the Olympics was creating a global brand. It was also creating developing the big infrastructures, which are the basis of the Smart City. But with out the leadership of the majors, as the Olympics was under the leadership of the mayor Pasquel Maragall i Mira, the 22@ was the leadership of the mayor Joan Clos i Matheu, the Smart City was the leadership of Jordi Hereu i Boher, the first mayor that started the Smart City, and the leadership of mayor Xavier Truas i Vidal de Llobatera. 6) Do you think that by hosting the Olympics, it helped Barcelona to become a Smart City? Yeah, answer is above.
58 7) Can you provide me with some examples showing Barcelona as a Smart City? Some examples are: the waste collection, energy, cooling system, and mobility system, such as bicing. Very interesting is the Barcelona European Lab, which is a project that is promoting the city as a lab. It is very interesting because it means that if you are an entrepreneur you can check your product before going to the international market. This way, let me tell you that, 22@ was the platform that allowed with the Fira de Barcelona to get the Mobile World Capital. There was a bid against Paris, Milan, Munich to host here the Mobile World Congress and also to get the Mobile World Capital. 8) What are some “Smart” companies in Barcelona? The main Smart Companies are Indreal and Telefonica, which are big corporations, or Media Pro. There is also Schneider and you have a lot of new ones that are developing new ideas. By the way here, at La Salle, we have a lot of new startups like Patecite that is developing a new parking for private bikes, which is very interesting. Also we have companies that are developing parking for cars, companies that are developing solutions for logistics in the Smart City. There is also company, Opticins that is developing a new strategy for the resilience of the city. When you have data, imagine that you have an impact. The impact could be snow, could be wind, could be water, or you don’t have energy. How could you manage the resilience of the city is what the company studies. 9) How is the government involved in transforming Barcelona to a Smart City? The mayors play a huge roles, as was discussed in the previous question. 10) How do you see Barcelona developing in the next few years in terms of being a Smart City? We have a wonderful window, a wonderful platform that is the Smart City Expo. It is a big event every November that is hosted in Barcelona. The city was promoting with Fira de Barcelona this event and more than 400 cities are coming to Barcelona for learning how Barcelona was developing the Smart City strategy. The Fira de Barcelona as an organization is managing this event as a moment for making reflections about the strategy of Smart City of all the cities of the world. In this case Barcelona now is leading the Smart Cities, perhaps with the new major Ada Colau the focus is more social, but the technologies will allow to manage better the infrastructures of the city, the competition of the companies and also the services to the people.
Appendix 3: Ramon Martín de Pozuelo Genís Position: Researcher/Smart City Coordinator at La Salle BCN Date: April 13th, 2016
1) How have you experienced the Olympics of 1992? Well I was 9 years old, so I remember it really blurry. I also wasn’t here in Barcelona, I was in my hometown. I watched it on TV and as I said I was really young. It was for us a very big event, and I can feel it… my parents and my family. I wasn’t aware at the moment how important it will be for Barcelona, and for our country… to put our city in the map internationally. 2) How do you think the city has changed? (Before being nominated to after the games) Completely. First of all, the big big change was to open all of the front to the sea. The city, before the Olympic Games, it was a city that had the sea there, but didn’t take profit from it.
59 After that the city was completely open to the sea. I think that right now it is one of the cities with the best beaches of the world. Because it is difficult to find a city, a big city, that you can find everything and also has the beach right there. I think that it is very good. More things, before the Olympic Games it was even settlements in different points of the city, it was not unified and some points in the suborns were modernized and there was more integration in the city because the whole city was modernized at that moment to give very good image of the city for the tourists that would come. It has changed completely and after these events there were other events that tried to copy the format of the urban development that the Olympics had brought to Barcelona. For example, when they did the Forum in 2004. Also the big change that was in 22@. That was also very big change in big zone of Barcelona that was completely abandon and forgiven. And well a change in the regulation, a change in the urban planning. 3) Can you tell me about the postgraduate Smart City program that is at La Salle? When was it found? Is it focused on Barcelona too? Well we wanted to build, firstly a program that integrates the three schools here at La Salle that are: engineering, architecture and business. At that point, our concept from engineering was a little bit mature that it was on business and architecture, and we had an idea what we wanted this postgraduate to be so we started moving it from the engineering with a collaboration from the other school. But the focus is on the technology, that’s why we moved it from the engineering school. We thought that, well we were discussing, which will be the technologies we want to teach to the students. And then how we can pack everything in a program that has sense to the students. To give the necessary training to them in order to tackle the challenges in the public administration point of view, and from the enterprise point of view. So we thought of four topics in technologies that were: sustainability and energy sustainability, data networks and security, monitoring systems and information/control systems, and smart building. And then we have big subject that is like an umbrella and goes from the beginning to the end of the program. This is the smart city ecosystem and it has all the different transferal topics that are relevant in smart cities and they effect somehow to the technologies. Like for example, the social economic impact and the social economic strategy and city branding, also the regulation and all legal aspects that need to be taken into account in building a smart city and working on smart city projects. Also successful business cases [were examined] and methods of funding and economical systems for funding the smart city projects [were discussed]. All around the PPP model (public private partnership) and also how to integrate also the people here, and convert it to PPPP model. So the citizen engagement is also taken into account and the change in the government. How we are moving into the e-government and to the smart government is also taken into account in some lectures. Mainly this will be the lectures and some exercises that the students need to do in these subjects. But we complement it with project that is done and presented by the city council and enterprises. We specially want these cases that are presented by the city councils because we want problems that they really have and they want to handle/tackle. So the cases that the students are working on for their final thesis are challenges that the different cities that we are working with have. We work with Barcelona and other cities that are in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, like Sabadell, Hospitalet, Tarragona … basically focus on Cataluña. It is easier because they have people that know really well the territory and the problem there and can go there and visit the city and see the problem at first hand. So well it’s better. We didn’t give that move to other cities where the students will not go, or its difficult to go there and study there. So at the moment we focus on the cities that are near to Barcelona, near to the students. On the other hand we have an
60 estash stay of three days in Elmer, that is the metropolitan area of Amsterdam, and they go there and see the problems of other typology of cities. Like these cities that are more in the Northern Europe, not Mediterranean cities like the ones here that the students analyze. This program was found three days ago. The program that we are doing right now is the third edition. This postgraduate is complemented by another postgraduate in smart grids. It is how to make smart electrical networks. The student can do both postgraduates and obtain a master of smart grids and technologies. First semester is the smart grid and the second semester is the smart cities curse. 4) What is your definition of a Smart City? It is a city that takes care of the quality of life of the citizens. Providing the technologies to make their lives easier and providing this technology to the public administration in order to have completely sustainable city in the whole concept, from the energy perspective, from the mobility, from the demographically sustainable, economically; in the whole aspects. So it has to attract different fronts. The energy point of view is one that we focus on the master because we think it is a clue for the energy sustainability but also for the economic sustainability. Because the cost of the energy creates to the other costs, all of the other costs of the services are related to/depend on the cost of energy. So it is important to have a energy framework. We are living right now sort of energy crises, more important than even the economic crises. We are running out of the energy resources that we used to use and we have to move to another framework of how we should be efficient in using that energy to be sustainable with the other types of resources that are coming. The renewable energy resources, at the time right now, don’t offer enough energy to be completely sustainable if we don’t reduce, somehow, the energy consumption in the whole city. So we have to use technology to reduce the consumption of energy in global and especially on our dependency on fossil fuels. 5) How has Barcelona transformed over time to become a Smart City? In many ways, one of the ways that Barcelona did very well in the recent few years was that they have complete plan with different programs packing all of the different aspects that I told you before. From the electrical vehicles plan, to improvement of the mobility of the people, to take care of the elderly people. So they have provided in these different programs improvements in the quality of lives. Or maybe it is not seen, some of these programs, by the common people or they don’t notice because it is a gradual change. For example the mobility in Barcelona has improved a lot. The public transforms and the duration of the technology with the public transport facilitates its use by the people. I go to other cities and I expect to have all information in my mobile, when the bus is coming, when the metro is coming, how I will have to go to this place or other. Right now it is not only in my mobile, it is also in all the bus stops as well. And are changing all the bus lines in order to be easier for the common citizens but also for tourists to take the bus. I think that it is very difficult when you go to another city; it is easier to take the metro because it is more controlled and you see directly all the lines. It is not that many lines as the city bus has and it is much easier to go. You have to do the next step to take the bus when you go to another city. So I think that Barcelona wants to simplify that, in order to make it very simple. I have to take this bus that is horizontal and this other bus that is vertical. We have the luck that Barcelona is very quadriculate city so it is very easy to move like it is for example in New York. So you will only have a look at the map and you will see which bus you have to take, exactly the same as happens with the metro. So the transportation has changed a lot and has a lot of improvements. But also, not only the public transport, but also driving your own
61 car [has improved]. Parking was very complicated, and it is, but it is improving. Because all of the zones where you can park right now, you can use the app to see and to charge the money there without going to the parking meter and putting there the money. You can directly park and put in the app: ok, I will stay here for one hour. You can extend this time using the app, without going to the parking meter, as it was before. And also more things that are doing, well regards mobility it will be that. Regards energy they have built this district heating and cooling in Barcelona. They have energy sensors that create heat or energy. They distribute it all around the central point to different buildings in 22@ district. Because they have these tubes connecting the different buildings. So it is like a central heating there and this energy is distributed. Also the cooling energy works the same. It is more typical in different cities, like for example cities that are very cold, like for example Moscow. It is more typical to have this central heating and to distribute the energy and not have individual heating in each of the buildings. So they provide that and also a lot of the buildings have right now solar panels to be more efficient and to go to this near 0 energy buildings that the entire European Union is going towards. What more… Elderly people, they have a very good program to integrate these elderly people through technology. They have won a price/award from the Rockefeller Foundation for this project that is like a social network for elderly people, connecting them and to make them feel integrated and not abundant by the society. Also they have fostered all these urban labs that people can go in there and test their own technologies and have there some facilities in these fab labs (fabrication labs). There are 3D printers in order to bring their own pieces, think about their own innovation and initiatives and how they can bring them to the market. They are fostering different fab labs around the city. It is related to the city makers movement, make it by your own. So the city is offering different spaces so that you can bring innovation somehow. It fosters also the cooperation between people because it is a place where all the makers go and discuss and maybe the can see opportunities with the synergies of different initiatives. 6) When did this transformation start? It is difficult to say, because we said that smart city is city that uses technology to improve the quality of life of the citizens. It has happened in the whole history, from the Romans that brought us the aqueducts and all the water systems that was completely new technology at that time. Olympic Games of Barcelona brought us well new spaces and now that we have technologies that are this break point, because for example sensors and big data are those technologies that can have, can provide, a very big change for the city. I will say that it was a smart city for every moment of its history. But bringing especially these new technologies, all the sensors that can digitalize the physical world and give us information in real time about the physical world is very important and the big data technologies that can manage all this great amount of technology given by the sensor and other social and real time. And providing not only this raw data but relevant information, processed information, well this provides the change, because you can use this technologies to organize better the city and plan and see which are the errors in the city, because at real time you can see what’s happening and this big data system can analyze and abstract reports and information. 7) Do you think that by hosting the Olympics, it helped Barcelona to become a Smart City? For sure, to improve the city, to open the city to tourism, that helped a lot to then have the economic sustainability, to improve the city in other ways for the common citizens. 8) Can you provide me with some examples showing Barcelona as a Smart City?
62 This question was answered above. 9) What are some “Smart” companies in Barcelona? Companies that are providing these technologies and are making Barcelona smart… Here we have different types of enterprises. We have for example Esemis that was found here in Barcelona, with this view of providing technology for making the cities smarter. Like people that are providing sensors and sensor networks for parking, for energy, for monitoring the city. The names of the companies include: Urbiotica, Zolertia, Effilogics, World Sensing (provide sensors for the city). But there are also other ones that are providing big data systems: Bismart, Opticits. And then we also have big companies that are collaborating with Barcelona to make it easier: Cisco, GDF Suez, Schneider Electric, Endesa – Enel (big electricity provider). These companies provide the technology, but there are also companies that provide consulting: Doxa Innova & Smart, Agbar Group (water management group). Barcelona has also done another initiative called city protocol. Joined with other cities; Amsterdam, Kyoto, Chicago... and also enterprises and academia, research centers and universities. In order to have a forum for discussing and presenting agreements on how we should treat one topic and another. For example we participate in this city protocol society, we are working right now on the open sensors platform and defining how open platform for managing sensors should be. Because right now we will have different platforms for managing those sensors from Urbiotica, Zolertia, Effilogics, World Sensing, etc, but Barcelona presented its own one and they opened it to every city that they want to use in order to have harmonization of the technologies that the cities are using. Because that could be one of the problems: ok we have city that is completely smart and uses all of these technologies but we live in a global world and when we have an application, for example for the transportation of one city, or the energy or anything, we want that this same application can be used in another city. Or the cities can even exchange this information, from one city to another, if it makes sense. It has sense especially in big cities, to compare if they are attacking a topic one way and it can be replicated in my city. But even more in the cities that are in the same space, in the same metropolitan areas. These cities should be managed the same way, and should have the same technologies. For example Barcelona and Terassa, Sabadell and all the cities that are around Barcelona, but are not Barcelona. Well there are a lot of people that are living in Terassa and are working in Barcelona. So we have to have the same technologies in all the cities in order to move from one city to another and manage it from a macro perspective point of view. 10) How is the government involved in transforming Barcelona to a Smart City? Could be a little bit controversial this, due to the change in the government. I can explain more what the former government has done or how they were involved in transforming Barcelona to a smart city. More than the current one, but I don’t know if it’s because they don’t have clear right now how they want to do the next step to transform Barcelona into a smart city or they have it but haven’t done it yet, because they are there since may of last year, so they are still thinking how they want to transform it. But first of all there was very good job in city branding, and in advertising how the city is changing to the citizens to other regions of the cities to attract talent and to attract money, international companies to come here and to invest. Attracting investment to Barcelona. And they did very good that way. That’s true that what they have done very good job as well at other social aspects, but the new government, the left party, wants to focus especially on social intercessions and social aspects of the city. And it is very good to improve that, because finally they want to focus on the common citizens that are living here in Barcelona. Also in building tourist model that is sustainable. It was the dark spot of Barcelona that I think right now they have advertised
63 the city very good, and we have a lot of tourists everyday in Barcelona and it is very difficult to balance it. It is very difficult to have a city that is sustainable economically, that has these tourists, because we need them but also don’t give bad impression to the common citizens. The mass of tourists arrives here so we need to come up with a trade off. I think that the government right now wants to arrive to that, wants to focus more on the social point, more stress on that, without forgiving some of the part of the attract investment here. But the government before focused on that and did a very good job that helped us and helped all of the smart city ecosystems to move forward. Because it tried to build this innovation ecosystem among all of the factors. Big enterprises that come here and do a lot of investment in the city, the SMEs that provides very good technology and how to support them in order to internationise them. And synergize with these big companies that are coming here. And also all the universities and all the research centers to collaborate with all of these enterprises and SMEs. And how to collaborate all together with the public administration. That was very good, they aligned all of us and now that they are not there anymore, I think that we have started this aligned goal together and collaborations between companies that at first maybe seems so little bit difficult but the public administration, the government, consolidated us. And put together projects between all of the enterprises in order to have collaboration with all of the enterprises and universities. Because mainly smart city is about collaboration of public administration and the industrial world and universities and all of the research centers that are providing talent, knowledge and technology/innovation? 11) How is Madrid involved in this? Madrid has its own perspective and its own model. It is important because each city has to have its own model. At some points it could be replicated, especially if the city has very similar typology, urban typology. Then we can replicate some things, but they have to have their own pros and cons and their own strengths, and find them and exploit them. So at some points we differ, for example Barcelona, another initiative that was interesting form the former government, was to build city operating system. Like a framework, a software framework, where all the information sources can mix and we can have all this big data processed in order to be used by applications or directly by the public administration in order to have information crossed. Cross-field information could be very interesting. For example how that event affects the mobility but also the energy consumption, the waste management, the water management, or how the different subsystems of the city relate and affect each other. It was a project that was a public competition where different enterprises presented their different offers and it was a special competition where there was discussion with the public administration in order to fix exactly what will be demanded by the administration for this city operating system. And then they will select in the final 6 proposals from different construction of different enterprises and it finally was won by Cellnex Telecom (Abertis Telecom), Accenture and other ones. They won that one year before the change of government and they are now negotiating how it will be done, if it will even be done, because it’s not sure right now. But could be interesting. But it should be done once it has been started in 18 months. That’s one way to do it, with a lot of discussion of how it should be done and what do we want from the public administration and what way it should be. And the other way is I directly take the solution of one of the big providers like is IBM and I will provide this brain of the city by this platform, like is IBM, like Madrid selected for example. Other cities selected solutions from Telefonica, but I think that finally we will have like different platforms, not many, but like we have for example different operating systems,
64 you have a Mac with Macintosh, and we have Windows, Linux. I think we will have the same in the cities; IBM platform, Telefonica platform, Cisco platform and these other ones, presented by Barcelona that will be like a somehow open platform that will be used. Dubai is also working on their own platform and they have the scheme of the platform that is very similar to the ones we have in Barcelona. At the end it is always the same, we have a layer with sensors that gives us all of the information about the city, another layer that transforms or adapts all of this information because it is very inter-related information. And then the brain or the processor of all of this information, at the end applications from all of that and direct information for the administration. 12) How do you see Barcelona developing in the next few years in terms of being a Smart City? I hope that it follows the line that was started by the former government, that it is more technology related. But in order to be self-sustainable; economically and energetically, especially, and demographically, in mobility. I expect improvements especially in mobility, because it was the main problem in Barcelona. It is improving, but it is one of the main problems. When I talk with the graduate students, when I give them some lectures about smart cities and I ask them, which are the problems in Barcelona, they always said, mobility and parking. If you want to go by car in Barcelona it is very difficult to park. So I think it is much, much better than other cities, for example in Madrid, that is completely chaos. I would never go by car in Madrid, from one point to another point of the city. But here I do, I work here and I live in Sagrera, which is almost in the other part of the city and I come here every day. I pick hour, at 9 o’clock, its lasted 20 minutes for me to get here, it was very good. But I have packing here and packing at my house. Once I have solved the parking problem, the mobility is quite good in the city. If we don’t have special events like the Mobile World Congress, that is chaos. But I hope that the mobility will still be improving in the following year, that we will have more investment in order to also improve in other topics, like all of the energy sustainability, water management and the interaction with the public administration via mobile or by other technology. Because well they have done some things in that line, but there is a lot of improvement to do here as well. To make more agile those interactions with the public administration for everything that you need about the city. And also the integration of special areas of Barcelona, the social integration, it is very important. The new government is very focused on building this tram all around the whole Diagonal. Now it is split. In the south (north) zone, that is more wealthy, this uphill zone, is not connected to other areas of Barcelona that are not as healthy, that are connected by this other tram that is next to the sea. If it is connected, it is a way to intergrade, to give opportunities. The improvement of public transport gives real opportunities to some areas, for example one successful case was in Medellin, in Colombia. They reduced a lot the crime in some areas by integrating and giving the opportunity to go easily to the city center to these areas. The tried to integrate these areas by public transport, well the citizens there had the opportunity to go to the center, much easier and faster. And it gives job opportunities to them and better quality of life for sure. So I think that a very good public transport is a very good investment to social integration. Apart from other initiatives that should be done as well to reduce the crime in these areas. However, we don’t have many areas that are considered dangerous areas. Me: maybe by the port? Yeah but it depends on what you consider dangerous. Well I had some students, high school international students, last summer doing here like 120. And they asked me what I would do to improve the security in Barcelona. And I told him, ok what do you consider security? Because I don’t see here as many public murders compared to Latin America or United States or other places.
65 It’s quite safe. There are some thieves at some tourist points, and it is very difficult to resolve and you have to take a look at that. They are trying to improve it, but it is very difficult, especially when we have that amount of tourism in that specific point. But we don’t have like Bronx or well these districts/neighborhoods that are so dangerous. We have some that are dangerous, compared to other zones of Barcelona, that would be our Bronx, but it’s not that dangerous. In any way I think that if we achieve to integrate them with the public transport and have some social initiative especially on education, because it is the way to change the things based on my perspective. How we educate these new generations and how we give them opportunities outside this neighborhood. Or hope to change from their perspective the neighborhoods will be good.
Appendix 4: Didier Grimaldi Position: Consultant at ITIMES Advisers Date: April 28th, 2016
1) How did you experience the Barcelona Olympics in 1992? I mean I was not living in Barcelona; I have been living in Barcelona from 1999. So my experience is watching the Olympics on the TV from Marseille, because I was living in Marseille at that moment. I was 21 years old. I mean, for watching the games, it was very well prepared and I mean I was surprised by the preparation. It was very well done. But I mean, I don’t have any personal experience, just from the TV. 2) How do you think the city has changed? (Before being nominated to after the games) I mean I think it is a very good question because for me its interesting question because at that moment, if we compare Barcelona and Marseille (which is my city), at that moment, before the Olympics both cities were at the same level. They were very similar at that moment because they are both Mediterranean Sea side, sunny and with the same advantages and governance. They are in the south of Europe, which is not so good in terms of transport. I mean you are not in the route of a lot of things. But if we compare now, 30… 34 years after, of course the difference is huge. I mean Marseille has kept the same, more or less, as Marseille in 1992. Barcelona has been transformed radically. Today Barcelona is a smart city, is more than a smart city, and Marseille, for instance, with the same conditions, was not able to do the same thing, the same journey. So yes, the city has changed, and maybe we will talk later about the changes. 3) Can you define Smart City in your own words? I am a PhD student in Smart city, so of course I know; I have been studying smart cities for three years now. So the first thing that I can tell you is that there is no one definition of smart city. I can send you a lot of papers, lots of definitions of smart city, so don’t ask me to define in words what is smart city. But I would say that at the end, smart city, the goal is to improve the quality of life of the citizens. That’s it. We all know the UN reports that there are more and more people in the cities, the resources are more and more scares. So we need to prove more services with less resource and need to improve the quality of life of the citizens. But the public sector has less money, less resources to spend. So the definition of smart city would be: improve the quality of life of the citizens and to improve the quality of life of citizens the first thing is not to help them with improving transport, urban transport. It is important, but for me it is not the most important. The most important is to get them a job. So I would say to improve the quality of life of the citizens but the first thing is to give a
66 job to all of the citizens. I mean especially in Spain it should be the focus of the smart city = to give a job to this citizens. 4) What city in the world would you argue is the best example of Smart City? Why? So if we talk about smart cities, there are different types of smart cities. There is the typology of smart cities, with different styles of smart cities that cover different needs of citizens. Of course the city in South America doesn’t have the same needs that a city in Europe. So I would say that best examples of smart cities… there is a ranking, IESE has a ranking, there are a lots of rankings. But I would say that one of them is Barcelona. It is in 3rd or 4th position in terms of smart city. New York is in the 2nd position, Chicago also. But cities like Songdo, a city in South Korea, is also part of the top 5 cities in terms of smart city. But again, this ranking is in terms of investment, number of projects, and etcetera. I think that if we say improve the quality of life of the citizens, we are not sure how to measure that. So its like do we think that if we increase the GDP in the country, we increase the happiness of the people? I am not sure that GDP is linked with happiness. Actually there is some report that explains that the consumption of chocolate is linked to happiness. So maybe we should look at the consumption of chocolate to be sure that the smart city is covering the goal to improve the quality of life of the citizens. So there are some examples of smart cities, yeah. I would divide examples of smart cities; I think you need to know that, into two blocks. What we call brown-field cities, brown means industrialized, build environment. So these are cities like Paris, Barcelona; that is mature world, the first economy, and the first part of the world. And there are green-field cities, which are cities that are born-in, these are cities that still have some green parts in the cities, that we need to build up. So when you give an example of smart city you need to think about these two kinds of smart cities, because the projects are completely different. If you are brown-field smart city, it means that private sector owns 90% of the city. The public sector owns only 10%, library, green parks, etc. So if you want to build a smart city, you need to convince the private sector to be smart. And they need to understand that to be smart it is not the responsibility of the public sector, because the public sector can’t do anything. If you don’t reduce the emission in your house, it will not have an impact in the city. Because putting buses, electric buses, will be very small part of the consumption. So if you are brown-field smart city there are some responsibilities to be smart is in the private sector, which many don’t know that they have this responsibility. If you are green-field, which means that there are still some nomads land in the city, there are still some green and with nothing. Like it was before in Exiampla, in 22@ districts in Barcelona, which was completely deserted. So yes, if you are in this kind of smart city, the public sector has a role, because public sector will decide from nomads land to build residential housing, commercial malls, or whatever. So yeah, in that transformation, the public sector will have a big role. So the question was, examples of smart cities… look at this; think about to distinguish green and brown. So would you say that Barcelona was first green and then now is brown? Yes. It was brown, but with the characteristic that a complete district, which is 22@, was completely green. It was the Manchester City, it was the Manchester model with very industrialized textile manufacturing that with the crisis in the 90s in Manchester, UK, all this, all of the people lost their job. If you go to the 22@ you can still see some remains of this period, with some chimney. You can see the oldest fabrics that have completely disappeared. With the money from the Barcelona Olympics, they decided to transform this from manufacturing to services and to create 22@ which is one of the incubators of start-ups, of ICT start-ups that
67 today are not only for Spain, for Cataluña but for Europe. We have Cisco, Schneider; we have a lot of companies that have put their headquarters for Europe in Barcelona, in this district. 5) Do you think that Barcelona is an example of Smart City? Why or why not? Yeah it is. The previous City Hall, not the actual one, but the City Hall of Javi, the former mayor put a lot of focus on how to make Barcelona a smart city and be recognized as a smarty city by the rest of Europe. So the previous major put a lot of focus on building a smart city, on making Barcelona a smart city with different phases. The program was divided into three phrases. First was to make the foundation, which is the infrastructure. Because you can’t make a smart city if you don’t have wifi, Internet and a lot of things. You need to have 99% of the people with Internet access, etc. Today you don’t see tehat you have access to 4G, you have access to WiFi, and a lot of space (cloud). You don’t really notice it, it’s normal, but it’s not so normal. If you go to Marseille, if you go to Lyon or other cities that are not smart, maybe you don’t have access to this. The second one was to attract; it was related to business. To attract big companies and they did well. If we look at some slide (talks about his presentation), you can see that there is some description of Barcelona smart city and you can see companies like Schneider, Cisco, GDF - French gas company. The National Union (United Nations?), one of Habitat, which is need for housing, has their headquarter here. The phase of the Barcelona smart city was to attract businesses, companies, to Barcelona and to have their headquarter in Barcelona. The last one, which is not completely finished, is citizens. It’s how this smart city can impact the citizens, can generate start up, can generate employment. Something that not the Big Companies… we know that these companies don’t create local jobs, because they usually outsource their services. So as a said before, smart city’s goal is to improve the quality of life of the citizens, to give them jobs. So now the last phrase is how to make smart city from citizen point of view. If you look outside and you say, ‘do you know Barcelona is a smart city?’ Maybe people will say yes, maybe people will say no. ‘Have you seen any impact that they have been spending so many millions of euros to make Barcelona a smart city?’ In general people will say, ‘I don’t see it; I have no job. So I am very happy that you spend a lot of money on smart city but where is my job?’ I don’t want to make political judgments, but the reason why Javi has lost was this, and the lady that came was because she was very pragmatic. And today I can tell you that the project of smart city in Barcelona is stopped, because the new major said to make things very pragmatic. Lets go and give food to pupils that are not eating everyday, lets open the restaurant in the schools to give food, to give meal to the pupils. Instead of spending money in making intelligent transport. Lets maybe have the same buses, same bus stops … stupid… but lets make sure that all our children are eating today the minimum. So the problem of smart city project in Barcelona is that they go step by step and I’m not sure that they can go faster. But the phase where citizens seize all the interest of doing that was too far inside the project. The citizens have no seen any benefit of smart city, only small, small benefit of the smart city. And I think that the politicians paid for that, the former politician paid for that. 6) Can you provide me with examples that demonstrate how Barcelona is/is becoming a Smart City? Yeah, so that’s it. First implementing infrastructures, second to attract companies to create businesses smart. So you look at the list, I will send you a list, and there is a slideshare where you can have access and you will see all of the lists of clusters. It’s called clusters of companies in different sectors. And then the citizens, which was to generate employment, entrepreneurship, but still is missing. 7) What are some “Smart” companies in Barcelona?
68 Maybe if you want I send you the presentation. Let me send you the presentation so you have access to this. 8) How is the government involved in transforming Barcelona to a Smart City? Well this question was answered already; maybe you have something to add? The only thing is, I mean, it is recorded so if you can please leave it only between us. So I mean, it was very marketing. Politicians have used this for their personal agenda. To be ranked 4th smart city in the world, of course makes you be, Javi was in the Fortune newspaper, he was ranked in 2012 the 49th most important, powerful person in the world. So they pursued this to be a smart city or they pursued this to for other reasons. This project was very marketing, and making some concrete things that citizen can see. 9) Do you think that by hosting the Olympics, it helped Barcelona to become a Smart City? Yeah, absolutely yes, because you need money. All of the smart cities that start from scratch need money at the beginning from Europe, from US government, money from external resources, a lot of money. Olympics is kind of a event that gives you a lot of money in a short time. You have 2-3 years to prepare the city, so you can attract a lot of money in short term. It was what Barcelona needed. But Barcelona also has something that Marseille doesn’t have, if we compare these two cities again, it is the entrepreneurship network. We have very good talent, very good skills here, very good schools, business school… La Salle. I mean what was missing was something to put fire, because all of the business ecosystem exist, to give this big scope, to leverage all of this; something was missing. And the Olympics was exactly what the city needed – the spark. 10) How do you see Barcelona developing in the next few years in terms of being a Smart City? I mean today all smart city in Barcelona has been stopped by the current major. Because as I said it is not the matter of making the city smart, it’s a matter of making people lot living in the street and have all the people with something to eat everyday. So for me, until the people, there are still some people that have led the smart city project previously. If you go in the City Hall, it is divided into two: the politician, the political people and the technical people. Of course when you have a change in the government, the political people leave. But you still have the technical people, which know exactly the smart city subject. For these technical people the message from the political people is: “We don’t want to hear anything about smart city, we want to hear things about how we are going to get jobs to all of the people, to give bread with something inside to all of the people and to be sure that we stopped people getting pushed to the street. That’s the message that I want to hear. If you come to my office and talk about intelligent whatever, I will not listen.” So what these guys need to do, I think, is to try to explain that the smart project they have in mind, are to cover the basic needs of the people. So maybe to create jobs. We want to push a smart initiative that will generate jobs for people in the city. I have a lot of ideas and I am sure smart cities initiative can generate jobs. For example: implementation of smart meter, implementation of smart meter for gas, for electricity. You have no job, you go to Schniddler, to whatever, and you make a business case for your building. You contact your neighbors and you explain to them, ok look: tell me how much you are spending in the electricity, in gas. For instance you spend a total of the building you spend 10,000 euros every year. Lets implement a Schniddler’s GDF smart meter and our consumption will decrease by 2,000 euros. Please give me 50% of the savings, so you are a citizen and you have your first two clients. Which is your own building, and your first income, which is 1000 euros. Now lets go to the neighborhood, and step-by-step you build your own company. And you don’t need to have a
69 lot of education, just common sense. So you just have to be able to put everything together in excel, and that’s it. So yes, smart city initiative can generate jobs. 11) Do you think that without the support of the government (new major), Barcelona can still develop in terms of being a smart city? The people that make the Mobile World Congress know that Ada Codau is not keen on it. Paris started to say that, “yeah if you don’t want to start in Barcelona, I am here”. Munich said, “yeah I am here also”. So people are aware of what is happening. So Ada Colau stopped and said, “No we keep it”. Because there is a lot of job, so we are not stupid and trying to destroy it, because it generates a lot of job, during the event and all around the year. But the question was open, and if you were the same guy, Javier, nobody would have argued about this removal. This removal would have been something automatic, would be easier. But because it was this lady, things started to take some stupid, bizarre, and some of the cities tried to leverage this and to offer their city for the Mobile World Congress. So yeah it is a good question. We are still in the first stage of the new government. And I am making some assumption, I mean I am not a friend of the new major, but I think that during the first step they are trying to show that they are different. So stopping things that made famous the previous one. So maybe something like, “I don’t want to hear but with the time they will open the doors, and will say that they don’t want to be so drastic and explain to me. You know what I like, so now change your way to present it, because you know what I like, so don’t tell me, marketing, international view, Barcelona’s ranking in the world. No. Tell me how smart will give jobs, will give money to the people.” And maybe as I said, if the technical people will know how to modify it a little bit, with the same goal but not the same presentation, then they will be able to convince the politician to carry on with the project of smart city. But with the project of smart city today, we can say, today it is stopped… largely stopped… And of course, as usual with all projects, if you don’t work, you go behind. So your questions, is there going to be a Barcelona smart city in 10 years, in 5 years? If they stop working, it will decline of course.
Appendix 5: Aidana Zhumadilova and Nabil Herzi Position: Founders of TempEmp Date: April 28th, 2016
1) Can you briefly describe your company and what you do? Aidana: So the company is called TempEmp. It is a market place for passionate people where they can share their talents and passions with those that are actually in need for it. So TempEmp has two services, which are called TempTask and TempJob. TempTask is more about peer-to-peer, it is for example some individual is passionate about photography, playing guitar or he is really good at accounting, chemistry or something like this. So in the TempEmp platform he offers his services, so like… “I am an accounting tutor, or I speak Russian and I can be a language interpreter, or something like this. And there is some one that does want to speak Russian and lets say that he speaks Spanish, and then he asks for his services and they have mutual acceptance through the TempEmp platform. This is TempTask. TempJob is more like someone is applying for a job at a company. So let’s say that it is more like a formal employment for short term. 2) What are your key competitors? (Especially in Barcelona) Nabil: In Barcelona I would say that the main competitors are Heigo, which is a new company that came out 2-3months ago. And then depending on which position you are,
70 which point of view you have. There is a bunch of competition regarding this labor market and the opportunities that you have in Barcelona. We can say JobNow, Job Intantent, there is a couple of them. But we think that we are different because we have our approach, we are more focused on passionate people and talents, rather than just random and informal jobs. But the main one I would say is Heigo, which is an application. 3) Why did you decide to launch in Barcelona? Aidana: First we decided to launch in Barcelona because well the team members met in Barcelona, in one university. So Barcelona is like a common place for all of us. And then we decided to launch in Barcelona because of the network, because we have some people that lets say have some roots in Barcelona and second of all we don’t speak any Spanish. I mean I don’t speak Spanish or Catalan, but Leonardo and Nabil speak Spanish and Catalan. So for us it is important to have someone from here, like a local, so we have some network and actually help us to build our platform here. Nabil: In Barcelona we also made a market research and we saw that yeah, Barcelona is very dynamic and vibrant job market. It is a spot where everyone wants to live; I mean we made a lot of research regarding this, especially with students and of course millenniums. And we are targeting this population because that’s number one rule, they are looking for short- term jobs and more towards their passion and talent rather than informal jobs. So that’s why Barcelona yeah. I mean the unemployment rate in Spain is very high, so we think that people now, in this sharing-economy will look for such platform to just apply and preform a deal on. 4) How would you say that Barcelona developed in terms of being a smart city? What was the trigger point? Aidana: I think that Barcelona is in the process of being a smart city. I think that Barcelona is at, lets say, the beginning of being a smart city. And that Barcelona is actually following UK so far. So for me, maybe it will take some years, lets say 2020, to become a smart city. Because companies like you, where you are providing a platform for employers and employees to meet. So it sort of is a smart application, no? Because you don’t need to go to ordinary Adecco or other company, where you need to go inside, you just need to go on your app. I would say that Barcelona only now is starting to grow and then it is a new destination for techie people to come and start their businesses. So until they grow and grow, at some point Barcelona will be a smart city. As you can see from the events, such as Mobile World Congress and Capital, it is at the stage of growing. Nabil: More over, I don’t know if you hear about it, Barcelona Activa. It is a public organization, which is behind all of the tech companies and this start-up wave in Barcelona. So it is supported and they are trying to catch up with London. More or less, what we heard about them is that Barcelona is a very good spot in Europe. Especially for the location, first of all, the weather, the climate and dynamics in Barcelona. So they will try to catch up London, which is so far the first spot in Europe regarding all of the tech environment. So yeah Barcelona, I would say now, is the time to be in Barcelona. Because in a couple of years it will catch up with London and it will be maybe too late to start a company. So that’s why we also decided to start from Barcelona, since we have the time to go further and to compete with the start-ups here. As you can see day after day, regarding the meeting that we had with Barcelona Activa, a lot of people are going to Barcelona Activa because it is supporting them. They have like a couple of people there that can help you with whatever you need regarding the start-up. They even have like a sharing space where you can discuss,
71 you can work, they provide entrance for free, and they have lawyers and all of this ecosystem around start-ups provided for free. 5) How do you think Barcelona will further develop? Nabil: I would say that Barcelona is trying to attract, the city of Barcelona is trying to seriously to be very attractive for whatever start-ups. Even if they are coming from the US, we met people coming from the US trying to do business in Barcelona. So I think that they are trying to give you whatever is possible to give to attract this investment from abroad. They are following the path of London because it is like completely crazy over there. And that’s why we incorporated the company in UK and even the people from Barcelona Activa told us, yeah now the spot is in London, its not Barcelona, but in a couple of years, we aim to get there. They are pretty sure that they will. Even the capitalists as well, we met a couple of capitalists and they said that yeah, Barcelona will be the city of the future. Aidana: It is because you have like first the harbor, and then you have very good quality of life of the people, in terms of entertainment and everything. You can work and have a work/life balance because of the location of Barcelona. And then it is growing and second is that I think that the number of investors is actually increasing in Barcelona. That’s why a lot of the tech start-up they want to come here and to attract those investors in Spain. Because the number of investors in Barcelona is actually increasing, increasing and increasing. Nabil: On the other hand, the government, they are trying to cap the buyers that are trying to invest in the tourism industry. I know that there is a law that if you want to buy a hotel or whatever, and you are an investor, it is kind of hard. They try to restrain a little bit because it is so, so, so crazy. The people from abroad are taking Barcelona, so Barcelona will not be Barcelona in a couple of years because of the amount of people coming from abroad and building start-ups, buying apartments, and whatever. Barcelona is the most diversified city in Spain, it is crazy. They are selling their businesses, their bars and whatever, and even the businesses on ground. There are bunch of businesses, which are owned by foreigners. Aidana: Plus the government is actually bringing the businessmen by saying that, “oh if you end up bringing me a business here which will decrease unemployment, we will do everything for you. We will do your papers, and whatever you want. Because you will bring something which will increase our employment.” I think that everyone is just coming with their idea and trying to do business here. Nabil: And to be honest, Barcelona so far… I am doing my thesis on Barcelona… I found out that Barcelona, regarding the dynamism and how well the start-ups and all of these companies’ economic environment is growing. It is the first spot in Spain; it is the first spot before Madrid. I thought that it was the capital, Madrid is the biggest one. Regarding of course the foreigners, it is the first spot, which is insane. I guess that that’s why there is the conflict about independence. Cataluña wants to be independent, but the Spanish government does not want them to leave. I guess it is more than 25% of GDP, and all of this economical point. Right now if people want to come to Spain, they want to come to Barcelona first, not Madrid.
Appendix 6: Jonathan Zimnoch Position: Consult at Comet Global Consulting Date: April 29th, 2016
1) Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? (Where you from, how old, why in Barcelona?)
72 My name is Jonathan Zimnoch, I’m a 23 year old Polish-American originally from Windsor Locks, Connecticut (U.S.A.). I graduated last year from Manhattan College with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems and Global Business. Soon after graduation, I moved to Barcelona to start my career in Information Technology working for Comet Global Consulting. I knew I wanted to work/live in Barcelona after I did a 6-month exchange program here in 2014. I fell in love with the city, the people, and the Spanish lifestyle among many other things, and knew that Barcelona was the place I would be the happiest. 2) What does Comet Global Consulting do? Who are the main clients? Where are the offices? Comet Global Consulting are customer interaction specialists. We use various types of software, programs, and methodologies to improve inbound and outbound marketing across various industries. This includes end-to-end project implementation and customized solutions for large to small corporations. Our main goal is to help companies contact valuable customers at the exact right time. Some of our clients include O2 UK, Royal Bank of Scotland, Sky, Virgin, and Visa (Mostly UK based clients). At the moment, Comet has around 500 employees in 3 offices: Barcelona, London, and Atlanta. 3) Why do you think there is a Comet office in Barcelona? From what I was told and understand, Comet has an office in Barcelona because this is where the company was originally founded in 2009. The Barcelona office is strategically located, ‘near-shore’ to the clients in the UK. This mainly comes down to money. Wages and standard of living are much lower here than in London, UK. Comet can pay lower salaries, and have smaller overhead costs in Barcelona, but at the same time be close enough to the client if face-to-face meetings are needed. This allows for greater profit margins for both Comet and our clients, which is always something we strive for. Also, the Barcelona office attracts a lot of young talent (like myself) looking for tech jobs in a sun-filled beach environment. Barcelona has much to offer! 4) Since you work in the 22@ district, do you see difference between that areas and other areas of Barcelona? (ex compared to Gracia or Sarria) There definitely are differences between the 22@ district and other parts of the city. From what I see, the 22@ district is mostly a business center, where many companies are now located, or are moving to. This is bringing a lot of people to the area, which is boosting retail, restaurant, and real estate demand. This is quite different than other areas of the city like Gracia and Sarria that are mostly residential and small business. One benefit of the business/commercial center 22@ is that it is still being developed; so many new changes and businesses will appear in the coming years. The surrounding neighborhoods, such as Poble Nou are becoming an ‘up-and-coming’ area that many young people are moving to. Nightlife in this area is strong and many people are benefiting from this. The 22@ project has made this change possible. It has made an older, lesser-known part of the city a new hub for creative, young people. 22@ has shined a new light on Barcelona as a smart, progressive city; I really enjoy working in this area and am curious to see what it will look like when fully complete. 5) Can you tell me about your experience with Bicing? (How often you use- compare Bicing to the NYC biking system) I signed up for Bicing a few months ago. I was tired of the crowded morning commute that usually took way longer than it should have. After looking into buying a bicycle (expensive) and other alternatives (not many), Bicing became the obvious choice, and I am very happy with my decision to sign up. I use the service every day, to and from work, and so far, have had little to no problems with it. It is very easy to use and there are stations all over the city.
73 In addition, designated bike lanes make journeys safe and speedy. One thing I have noticed is that sometimes the bikes are rather old and not in the best condition, but functional. Also, stations can fill up quickly and parking spaces are limited. However, there are cars that bring the bikes from one part of the city to another. This helps out a lot with the bike distribution and supply and demand. People usually ride down the hill, so the cars bring the bicing up the hill. Other than that I am pleased. It reminds me of the CitiBike system that is in place in New York City. Although I never used the service regularly, I can tell that Barcelona’s bike sharing system is much more efficient. In NYC, anyone can use the system, from tourists to business people. This can pose a problem because tourists don’t know the city that well and can cause a hazard for other riders and drivers. Bike stations in Manhattan are very spread out, so it is hard to find a bike or a place to put one once you are riding. Also, in comparison, New York does not have as many bike lanes as Barcelona so the commute is more dangerous and not as convenient as it is intended to be. In my opinion Barcelona’s Bicing system wins hands down.
Appendix 7: Paul Canning Position: Founder of PC Exhibitions and Intern-Tech Date: May 11th, 2016
1) Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? (Where you from, why in Barcelona?) Okay… my name is Paul Collin Canning, I’m from London, born in Wimbledon and lived in London all of my life. I worked in event marketing and design for the past 15 years. I worked for two design companies; one being called “Neil’s Creative” and the other being called “Zed life”. I worked in sales for both of those companies. I started off in Zed Life and my boss at that time was 60 years old. He was quite old fashioned; he had very old fashion sales ways, which I learned from. And I learned how to engage with event-type of people from the age of 25. I worked there for three years and then I moved on to Neil’s Creative which is a younger company, where I also did similar type of things as the previous; which was designing and building exhibition stands. I was there for two years before moving to Barcelona. I was in Barcelona basically on holiday, my boss had a boat in the port, and I met my wife, who I didn’t know was going to be my wife at that time, but we had a long distance relationship. I was working from the UK and then travelled back to Barcelona, working for Neil’s Creative. Finally Neil’s Creative gave me the opportunity to work from Barcelona with them. Oh but I missed a big chunk of my story actually, because I actually started my company, PC Exhibitions, while I was working for my very first company, which was Zed Life. So I was doing this in the background all this time, so while I was working for Neil’s Creative and working for Zed, I also had my own company that I founded. It was based on events, but was doing more of a consultancy type of work. Once I moved to Barcelona, I decided that I wanted to fully engage myself in my company, PC Exhibitions, so I left Neil’s Creative and I have been working for myself full time since around 2008/2009. So that’s pretty much my story, more? 2) Did you experience the Barcelona Olympics of 1992 in any way? I remember watching Barcelona Olympics. I would have been 15 years old, because I left school in 1993, and you leave school in the UK when you are 16… so I was 15. I don’t really remember it too much, I can’t really tell you who won anything, but I definitely did watch it. In terms of Barcelona, I mean, I don’t really remember Olympics… sorry.
74 3) Do you know how the city has transformed in the 80s - 90s? (pre-Olympics to post-Olympics) I don’t know how it transformed in terms of visually, because I wasn’t visiting the city at the time, but obviously since living in Barcelona I have been told and I have visited the sites, which were transformed. Also my wife is from Barcelona, she is Catalan, so she has given me a good overview, along with the rest of the family, of how the city transformed. Especially the part by the beach, which I believe there were lots of gypsies living there at the time. There was nothing there at all, so yeah I have experienced it from words. 4) Can you briefly explain Intern-Tech to me? We actually had a conversation about that in the office today, and I am still trying to work that out. But basically the idea came up because for PC Exhibitions, my design company, we were having interns basically for the past 3-4 years and the last few interns that I had were having problem. It could have been the housing or that they were matched incorrectly with the jobs that they should have been doing. And they have paid various sums of money to get a very good experience. I was given the idea from one of my interns at the time, he told me that, you helped me so much, tried to help me with my accommodation problems, maybe you should do something similar. So I looked into the idea of Intern-Tech, well I didn’t know that it was going to be Intern-Tech at that time, that is the name of the company, but I knew it had to be something that is a little bit niche. I checked around, researched what programs are out there. I didn’t see anything that was directed to technology, so I thought, this could be an area that we can work on, and so why Intern-Tech. Intern because that’s what we are providing and Tech because that’s what we are trying to promote. So that’s why. 5) Why did you decide to launch Intern-Tech in Barcelona? Well Intern-Tech is actually launched in Barcelona and London simultaneously. But obviously I live in Barcelona, so, and I have a lot of contacts here, so it is much easier for me to start it here. Also Barcelona has been developing technologically, as more companies from abroad are coming to set up their offices here. So I felt like there will be a demand for the interns here. But at the same time, London is my home where I was born and raised, so we are actually working from London as well. The aim is to spread Intern-Tech through out Europe, not just in Barcelona and London, so maybe at some stage we can do Intern-Tech France, Intern-Tech Italy. Basically where there is a need for interns to travel to and what they are interested in seeing. Ok perfect, I have an additional question: What countries did you have interns from in the past? The interns have been from the US, from Greece, from Holland and from Canada. So varied. 6) How do you see Barcelona developing in terms of being a smart city? Well you got the Smart City Congress, which is every November. We worked for, with PC Exhibitions, for the career government last year. As a smart city I think that, I mean, Barcelona in general, I think, has developed enormously in the last 20 years, so I think that, its not like London of course, but the technologies in Barcelona has definitely improved. The metro stations, the people that use the metro system here are very, very happy. I think that it is actually a lot newer than London as well. A lot bigger and you can use your mobile phone at some stations as well, some lines, which you can’t do in the UK. I think that as a smart city I can see that in the next, I don’t know, 10 to 20 years, developing to be one of the major of infrastructure.
Appendix 8: Elisabet Garcia Position: Sponsorship manager at Open Camp
75 Date: May 18th, 2016
1) Can you please describe Open Camp to me? (What it its, what’s the main purpose, when it was found, when it started working) The concept is that the big cities all over the world that had Olympic Games there is usually have a lot of land that’s not used and these cities, for example: Berlin, Atlanta, London. Thanks to these Games, these cities got the unused terrain and got the money to make something of this terrain and use it. There was a lot of big investments that were made in these cities, when there usually wasn’t enough money to invest in this terrain. The only problem is that now this terrain that was invested on through the Games can only be used for like professional sporting events. So basically there was lots of investment in stadiums and other sporting facilities, so now they can only be used for that purpose. Only professionals can use the facilities that were built for the Olympics. So the problem now is that these post-Olympics cities need to maintain the Olympic facilities, which is causing a big problem. Open Camp is detected this problem and is trying to create historical investment plan in order to take advantage of these establishments. Open Camp is trying to rebuild these old infrastructures, to reuse this space and change the concept. We propose that these big cities create parks that are still related to sports. So the use is not just professional, but although it is still related to sports but everyone will be able to use these facilities. We want to develop this new idea of sports: making it part of entertainment for people. Changing the idea of sports. We want to include tourism, entertainment, and sports in one category. There are only three different categories of sports that have introduced this idea: skiing, golf, and I don’t remember the third sport. What we do is to allow the customer to have personal entertainment, business and actual sport in one. Like for example for skiing you need to pay for one-day pass, so this will be similar. People use the ski ramps for a day, and they will be able to do the same with Open Camp. So we created marketing through this concept. You can find indoor ski slopes in places like Dubai, where the customers can get a one-day pass and enjoy the slopes. This is where the idea of Open Camp, of reopening the Olympics facilities to the public came from. The cities in which the government has a lot of money to invest in these kinds of things are the cities that will profit most from this concept from including entertainment into sports. We will have very good infrastructure and venues. Barcelona will work on the same concept, the infrastructure will be improved and the same idea will be introduced. The big cities from all over the world have already contacted us in Barcelona to do the same thing, but in different places around the world. So these investors, called CUOI, take these unused installations that remain from the Olympics that are specialized in sports, and open them up to the general public. For the first time they are reopening the Olympics, but for everyone, while getting a profit. So everyone can be an Olympic athlete for a day and can try and experience the same things as an Olympic athlete. With your minute of glory for one day. So you are going to be able to do sports that are practiced in the Olympics, baseball, running, triathlons, archery, football, basketball… so the big sports that are present, but their infrastructures were not 100% running. Also the Paralympic sports will be included, so that people can experience that as well. It will be opened as if it was a theme park, so like Disney or Port Aventura, but it is going to be marketed towards older crowd, families, adolescence, young adults… We want everyone to have fun, but instead of rollercoasters, it will be through sports. The opportunity to experience the biggest entertainment in the world, which is sport. So everyone that likes sports and practices sports will have the possibility to have one day to have fun. Since it is a park for entertainment, what we are proposing is that you go for a day. It will not just be
76 about sports, there will be a lot of shows, life concerts, restaurants, shops related to sports and popular sport teams. The culture will be integrated, so like the museum about the Olympics, so that people have more background about Olympics. It will be the fist Olympic museum. So this is from the point of view from the consumer, what they are going to find when they go there. So now from the point of view of the people that are in the sector of sports, is that this is going to be one and only opportunity to spread sport, especially the sport that is not so popular. It will be possibility to market, and inform people about the sport. Everyone knows basketball and baseball, but there is other sport like fencing and archery that is not so popular in Spain. That way people can experience and be introduced to new sport in very good atmosphere, in the best facility, the Olympics facilities. Now from the cities perspective, the government will be able to optimize this unused space and will be able to benefit from the installations that were already installed. They will no longer need to pay so much maintenance, as it will finally be used. These cities that still have these Olympic infrastructures intact with have a chance to open it up to the general public, not only to the professionals. Now a lot of these infrastructures, especially the Olympic stadium, is only used for concerts, which take place twice a year. 2) What facilities are involved in Open Camp? The venues that are going to be used will be the installed Olympic infrastructures of 1992. In the first phrase there will have the Olympic stadium, the baseball field and hockey field. The next year we will install the NEFC and school for physical education. 3) How does Open Camp help with the Olympics of 1992 legacy? We will help with the legacy by opening these instillations that haven’t been used. There were closed, and now they will be open to the general public. The people from all over the world will come to see the old Olympics stadium, to see the installation and take advantage of what the infrastructure was originally designed for: for sport, not for concerts. So it will finally be used for what it was originally build for, although concerts can still happen. However, this will be a more beneficial way to use the buildings. Another way, the third way, is by promoting what the Olympics are and creating knowledge of what happened and the events that took place in Barcelona 1992. So more audience is going to be aware of the Olympics subjects and to what happened. The Olympics museum already exists, but now we are going to open a bigger one, more modern, more up-to-date. And it will have more traffic, more diffusion and more visitors. This will happen in three years and the center of interpretation will also be part of it, but there is no specific date announced yet. We are still trying to come up with an agreement with CUOI on how to sell the merchandise of the international Olympics merchandise. They want to sell merchandise from the past Olympics, because now you can’t find it anywhere, and it would be a great marketing opportunity. 4) What was your role with Open Camp? Everything started as a start-up, just an idea. In 2011 it started to be conceptualized by the founders and they started to come up with ways of how to get investors and money to do this. Then they were looking for a city to do this, and Barcelona was the city that was picked. They talked to the government, to the Ajujamento de Barcelona, to get the permission to rent out the old Olympic stadium. They talked to them and told them our plans. The last phrase, which was in 2015, was the implementing phase. So the conceptual part at this point was already implemented, so now they just needed money. I was hired mostly hired for the marketing, but more specifically to create different commercial channels, mainly focusing on business-to-business. I was in charge of talking to sponsors, so that big sport companies would like to get involved in this project. This project is not just an amusement park, but we also want to integrate a platform for live sports. We want to have technological innovation,
77 so we need the collaboration of the big companies and also the big companies can use this to research and test their product, as a platform for people to see the new product. This is going to be a good platform for companies to communicate with their customers. So my role was to contact these important sport companies, I wanted to introduce them as partners and Open Camp to be a platform for innovation in the sport industry. This was of course in the department of marketing, but just like with any other start-up, I was involved in every part of the company, not just marketing. 5) Are you still involved right now? How? I am not, now I am working in La Salle as the marketing director. 6) Is Open Camp working as was predicted? Are there any problems? As all startup companies, in the beginning, they are very dynamic and are constantly changing. The final concept is going to be very different from the initial concept. This is a normal evolution for start up companies. However the main concept remained and can be seen in the final product. The project will be going through few phrases; the final phrase won’t be seen for another 2 years. When we will open, in June 2016, it will only be 60% of the final thing. 7) How would you say that Open Camp helps portray Barcelona as a smart city? For me it is a project high innovation level. This project works through entertainment and really impacts the sport industry. It is going to be based on sports through entertainment, which opens a lot of new doors. This means that a lot of innovation is going to be needed. It is going to be a new way of seeing sport, so it is going to be generating new content for a lot of important sport companies. For Barcelona it is going to be an amazing opportunity. It is going to create a lot of jobs, and it is going to make Barcelona more innovative. It is a new concept that is first time seen by the world, which means that it will bring even more tourism to Barcelona. From the point of view of Smart city, it probably cant, in phrase 1, impact the concept of Barcelona being a smart city. It is a great platform, with an open mind, for the sport industry and entertainment. So Smart city Barcelona will benefit from this. 8) How do you see Open Camp developing in the future? Ones the first initial project in Barcelona is completed, as this Open Camp is a test run, so if it is successful, it will be taken to other cities. Cities that had also hosted the Olympic Games. So it is going to be a model for other cities. Hopefully it will become a global project and open in other countries. However, we will need to wait and see how it goes, see if it creates benefits. The initial idea is that there is Open Camp Europe. It will not be called Open Camp Barcelona, but Europe, and the plan is to have one of these parks for each of the continents. So that is the idea. Open Camp Barcelona will be the only Open Camp in Europe. We will see what happens in the future. 9) Why did the project take place in Barcelona? Why not in different Olympics City? The founders are from Barcelona, but Barcelona was not picked for that reason. We made a research and found that Barcelona is the best place to start. It is a creative and innovative city. The Olympics facility is located right in the city, and Barcelona is a city that attracts 7 billion tourists a year. So that adds a huge value. Barcelona is also very well connected and recognized internationally. Barcelona is seen as a touristic city as well as being very innovative. Also because the venue is very well conserved, other venues weren’t in such a good condition. Therefore it is a great place to start. In other cities the stadiums are basically destroyed and Barcelona conserves historic buildings and installations very well.
78 Appendix 9: Mohsen Far Position: CEO of SIMBIM Solutions Date: May 23rd, 2016
1) Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? (Where from, how long in Barcelona) Well I am originally from Iran and I am in Barcelona since 4-5 years ago. I moved to Barcelona with the main intention of finalizing PhD research and from meeting some friends in Politec University of Auntonoma we initiated business plan on making a new type of business model on BIM implementation. It was a merging… let’s say market… technology in architecture and construction world. And we did a business plan together; we submitted it to Barcelona Activa, the entrepreneurship office of municipality of Barcelona. The benefit be that kind of recognition that we established a company and ran the business. So this is what I can say about myself and Barcelona. 2) Have you experienced the Olympics of 1992 in any way? No, not really. I used to watch it, I think, if I am not wrong, if it was 1992 on the TV shown. 3) Do you know how the city has transformed? Yes. I mean I know that as being researcher in urbanism and architecture. That is my personal experience of the city. I mean the main agenda of this city, of the main motives was before and after the Olympics of 1992. That they try to think about the extension of the city to… I mean new transport systems, to provide the capacities for handling lots of incoming people, population, and tourism, especially for tourism sector. So Olympic 1992 were a keystone in that transformation. So that is what I know in general. And you were doing your PhD in the architecture? I am finalizing my PhD in urbanism and evaluation, it is in the school of architecture, it is related to architecture, but it is more related to management and urban economy. 4) Can you tell me about SIMBIM? Yes as I said in the beginning, SIMBIM stands for Simulation and building information modeling. We made a new business model of BIM implementation in early 2012/2013. It was almost one and half years before BIM implementation suggestions became part of policies in European Union. So we are following the activities, I mean the original activities that have this technology going to be implemented in Europe, so we found out that it is going to be. And then based on that we started to make the business plan. In 2013 we established the company, SIMBIM, based on the local company start up in Barcelona. And then we started to be recognized by different public entities by having different activities, such as for example in 2014 we published a white paper of “I am BIM manager, how can I help you?” in three languages. So it was like we provide different work flow for BIM implementation. That white paper, introduced in Smart City World Congress of 2014, we were part of it for the first time, as being recognized in the area of smart Catalonia. And then we start to work on it, I don’t know. And then… SIMBIM… we are also having a good relationship based on our know-how and technical capacity of our team, with some software developers. With like (5:06 in interview, could not understand) … and many other companies. So we are in contact, in the first hand contact, with software developers, so we became the distributor and software center of those software developers in North Eastern Spain. So that was another thing we focus on. 5) Why did you decide to launch SIMBIM in Barcelona? That’s an interesting question. In 2011/2012, before that I used to live in Cyprus, so in that time I was investigating on a project and I had the opportunity between couple of different
79 cities to expand the project. I was Vienna, Nottingham, Barcelona and a couple of others, but mainly these three cities. So I was comparing the opportunities. So I made an investigation of the different cities, I came to visit Barcelona, not as a tourist, but with the professional perspective. I started to compare many different factors of Barcelona with the different cities. So I started to walk inside the city and I started to observe what is the difference. So I started to see that this city, for example, has a very well designed transportation system and urban system. It is even more than it is promoted. I can say that the actual performance of the city was much better than what I knew. That was one factor, and then I started to investigate on the topics related to economy and public transport and urban and smart cities. That was another factor that in 2012 it was the peak of the economical crises in Spain and Barcelona was on the top of the economical situation. In the peak of the economical crises, in fact, Barcelona had a little impact. So it was another sign of a strong city. Because many cities, for example, Nottingham and Vienna, they are getting the benefit of good economy. But they have a good economy; the question is if a crisis happens, how those cities can survive through. The crises in Spain didn’t start in 2012, 2012 was the peak of it, and Barcelona was still staying strong. So based on resilience idea of the city, I found that this city can survive. That means that this city has the capacity to survive. Then I started to investigate on the business opportunities of the city, what type of projects the universities take, or different research centers and institutes. Then I found that there are different type of initiatives from local government of Barcelona, of Catalonia. Especially in Barcelona, that they focus on making the city as a… how can I explain it… change the city format as the whole city becomes an entrepreneur identity. That’s kind of branding, but more than branding it is not just making, I mean supporting entrepreneurs in the city. The city of Barcelona became itself as an entrepreneur. That’s why I decided to, and many other factors, but it is going to be a long conversations. But with many other concerns, at then end, I can say that Barcelona, in my notebook, had high rank. 6) Is the government helping in any way? Well with SIMBIM yes and no. I mean, here nothing comes for free. But we work hard to get support. So the system here is like the reality. There are two types of support. One type of support is that you submit a good project, and you have kind of fund. Well if you are lucky. The other way is that you work hard and you get recognition. Then what is happening? In your project or in your company, you get kind of endorsement and incentives. We are in the second part. So what type of incentives do you get? For example, being able to use the facilities of Barcelona Activa, for the office building. So it was a huge reduction in the cost of the office building. Being able to access to different resources, I mean professional resources with easier access and lower fee that was a type of incentive. As a direct help, I can say that it was a great help in terms of they helped us to be recognized in the market as a start-up company, in the local market. So that was a great help. Another great help was that they provide opportunities to us. In many places, when we talk about governmental help, or incentive, it means a big amount of cash, capital coming directly to your bank account and you must deliver a very good report at the end of the year. But in Barcelona I understand that they provide a different kind of help. And this different kind of help is that they provide you opportunities. If you are able to take advantage of it, take advantage. And if you are unable to take advantage of it, then you lose the opportunity. So that’s an added value for Barcelona. It makes the city competitive, even the people inside are competitive. There are opportunities, it is open to everyone, it is possible to access, but are you able to get it or no? If you are able to get it, then you are welcome. If you are not, then sorry. So it is like, lets say, mix of capitalism and socialism system. If you can not get it, you can not get it. But if
80 you can get it, if you deserve to get it, it is available to you. So that’s the added value of Barcelona. And this is all coming from the Barcelona Activa? Lets say Barcelona Activa is one of the entities. There are many entities in Barcelona, in the government of Catalonia. In fact they have the same mindset of systems. Barcelona Active in terms of entrepreneurship, in terms of business, it is one of the main factors. Then in our case, we have for example, a connection with Fira Barcelona was with the same system. We entered with Fira Barcelona within the Smart City Expo World Congress as a Smart Cataluña. We were introduced by Barcelona Activa, selected by Generalitat. We have been part of the expo in 2014. Then we became part of another organization called Barcelona Love Entrepreneurs, BLE organization. It is a SME organization and they have like an elevator pitch program. We entered this program, made a 60 second presentation. We met many other people during this elevator pitch. Again we met the people from smart city expo, we been there before and presented our idea. Then for example, with the same mentality, ok write your proposal, they read our proposal and accepted doing our pilot project with them. Our pilot project was the second best project in all of the activities. It was like, lets say, we had high rate of success compared to other organizations that had big available fund or system of organization. So in that sense I can tell that Barcelona is a city of a lot of opportunities and we are able, or we try to be able, to get advantage of most of the opportunities. That’s why I said before to you, before this interview, that Barcelona is a real city for smart cities, for smart activities. 7) Do you believe that Barcelona is a smart city? Why? Yes. A smart city has many different meanings. The first meaning comes from the mindset that people think that it only comes from applications, mobile apps and nice software. No its not. That’s the end user level of smart cities. So what is happening in smart cities? It is first smart thinking. If there is no smart thinking, then there is no smart city. After you need to have smart strategy, smart mindset, smart business, smart infrastructure, and then after having smart infrastructure. What does it mean smart infrastructure, something scientific fiction? No, something efficient and lets say with high performance systems. So then you can have smart application to get advantage from those smart infrastructures, strategies, business models. Then we have applications that can put everything together, and we call it smart cities. So in Barcelona, as I explained, the city itself is entrepreneurial, the cities identity. So then I can say that the city is branded not just by the name, but by actions of smart city. But not smart city was of understanding of mobile applications. So as a smart, separation, city; not as one keyword. So why do I believe that Barcelona is a smart city? I think that in Barcelona we have good strategies, in comparison to many other cities, from both private and public sectors. We have a smart or efficient infrastructure and public services, and then we have in Barcelona the platform for having lots of applications that turn the city at the end with the keyword “Smart city”. So that’s what I think. 8) Can you describe to me the smart city projects that you were involved in? So technically I am involved in BIM implementation, building information modeling, implementation in three main directions: implementation in SMEs, small medium enterprises, implementation for public sector and implementation in academy. So we get involved as an origin tool for BIM implementation. Then what is BIM? Building information modeling, I can say that: we know what is building and what is modeling. These two topics are not new. The key is on information. Attached information of the building or any environment, attached to a model means database. That means when you have a database you get this type of infrastructure of our urban areas, our cities that any application can read. Technically we implement infrastructure or method of data collection for preparing
81 databases of our city. Then it can be part of, lets say, any application. I mean many applications already exist that can read BIM models. One of the projects that we got involved in was the Smart City World Congress. We developed the whole Fira Barcelona building with BIM model. We incorporated many different applications to develop the building so it was collecting the data of that building from many different years, from the past 10-15 years. That means that there were many different type of plans, documents that were very often not matching each other, so collecting all of the data, building up a 3D model, attaching all of the information, and then filling the software with actual stands of all of the exhibitors. With the simple data received from the exhibitors. At the end we had the full data of the show of the Smart City Expo. So with that full model we present what are the possibilities, that an event organizer, for example Fira Barcelona, can use the infrastructural data, the space data, the information about the stands, with different applications to manage and control the process and increase the efficiency of their performance. So it was involved with Smart Cities, but not as an end product, as a middle product. The other thing that we were involved in is that we were developing programs; I mean educational programs, postgraduate program in Politecnic University of Catalunia for Smart Cities. Not just computer applications or urban design/planning part of it, but how to fit BIM technology, the role of BIM technology in a data collection and data aggregation. To be able to run different simulations for preparing a good database for planning system and being connected then to the BIM applications. So that was another project that we already did and is already on. When was this project initially started? This project we started, if I am not wrong, in September 2014 we started to develop it and in fact this week we have the first day of the official training of that as a postgraduate in UPC. But this week is going to be the starting. We did the program jointed with Barcelona Activa, with different entities as a pilot project, as pilot training, but now it is like a solid postgraduate program. I hope it is going to be something productive. Are you going to be the professor? Yes. I am already a professor, I am teaching in Politecnic University and University of Navarro. So for this postgraduate of Smart Cities, its going to be the first time that I am going to be teaching in that program, but yes I am already an instructor in different universities. Wow, how do you manage with time? Well this is what I was telling you about, the other side of Barcelona. It’s very competitive, I mean in terms of business. Barcelona has two faces, one face is like Spanish costal city, lots of fun, everything is like fiesta, sun, and beach. But the other side is very aggressive. I mean that are running this business that are making the city for customers, for who use the city as something fun, they work so hard. From many different sectors, from us as a small business to big organizations, the other side, other face of Barcelona, I can say always that it is like a very aggressive business city. That everyone working, three days is a lot, it is nothing short. I mean in Spain three days is nothing, not really long, but in Barcelona, three days is a long time. It is kind of funny because Spain has the “siesta” and doing everything “manana, manana, manana” but that Barcelona has this other side. Yes, it is like I told you in the beginning, that Barcelona has the entrepreneur identity. It is different, because if you collect lots of entrepreneurs in a place, in a city that doesn’t have the identity then it not entrepreneur. Like if you collect, but the city, how the city ecology works. Barcelona is like a young entrepreneur, as to oppose to London. London also has entrepreneur identity, but it is an old entrepreneur. So Barcelona in fact is a young entrepreneur, it has its own identity, its own position not just in Spain, not just in Europe but internationally. It has something to say for itself and it is a city that is very comfortable. I explained the idea of my thesis, what I am planning on doing.
82 Ok, we were actually part of 22@ the first three years of the SIMBIM project. We were actually in one of the main buildings called Almogavers Business Factory. The building was an old factory renovated with many smart, lets say, facilities. As far as I know, if I am not wrong, you will need to double-check this, but as far as I know, the building regenerated all of its own electricity and it has many good technologies as a building itself. We were three years in this building until we moved to the Technological Park. You should look at: smartcityexpo.com/BIMCITY
Appendix 10: Zhanna Go Position: International Manager at Technova Date: May 26th, 2016
1) Can you tell me a little about yourself? (Where from, study, work) Yeah, of course. I am from Russia, from Moscow. I moved here four years ago, to Barcelona, to study in La Salle Ramon Llull to study Business Administration. I studied specialization finance and now I am doing marketing. 2) Why did you decide to come to Barcelona for your studies? I decided to come to Barcelona because first of all it was an inspiration from my parents coming, because they went on a trip to Spain and they actually saw that the climate here is really good and that the people are very pleasant. And so they thought that it would be better for my health. And then I was looking for the universities and I found that La Salle was a really attractive one because it was providing a lot of opportunities. So I thought that Barcelona was the best option for me. It is close to the sea, has a lot of opportunities in terms of studying, in terms of working, so I moved here. 3) What does Technova do? Actually in Technova what we do is that we are incubating and affiliating startups because they need some support in their initial parts. There are four stages that we support them in, starting from idea and ending with going to the foreign market. So that’s what we do. We also organize events. For example in Barcelona we organized like yesterday. There was a event in Madrid, Open Innovation Place, where start ups were able to present their business models in front of investors. And what are the four stages? There are stages… lets say one is starting from the idea, because when you are first incubating your idea you just have a kind of illusion of what you want to do. The second one is when you already have the business model, but you are not advanced enough to go to the market, then you are going to the market; that is the third stage. The fourth stage is going to the foreign market. 4) What is your role? My role, I am not incubating, alleviating start-ups. What I do is that I am bringing start ups from other countries to work here, to have some studies here or even try to integrate to the ecosystem of Barcelona to be able to enter the Spanish market. Or what I do is also that I am helping our start-ups, lets say Spanish start-ups to go to other countries, like for example to Germany to start incubating there, to start entering their local ecosystem. 5) What is the difference between Technova and Technova Young? Yes I do, because in the beginning I was in Technova Young. Technova is actually incubating and affiliating start-ups and Technova Young is, actually, lets say a club, where young entrepreneurs come together and they share their ideas, because they want to innovate, because they want to enter the local ecosystem, because they want to gain more
83 knowledge, ideas and inspiration, which they can’t by just studying in university. So it is an important institution to visit for young entrepreneurs. So it is like “students-only”? Yes.
Appendix 10: Major Olympic facilities, their use in 1992 and today Venue Use in 1992 Current use Source Estadi Olímpic de Opening/clos Open Camp, Concerts “A Little History” (Estadi Montjuïc ing ceremony Olimpic”) and athletics Palau Sant Jordi Gymnastics, Open Camp, Concerts, “A Little History” (Palau volleyball, Sporting events Sant Jordi) handball Piscines Bernat Swimming Public pool “Piscines Picornell” Picornell Piscina Municipal Diving and Public pool “Piscines Municipals de Montjuïc water polo Montjuïc” Institut National Wrestling University – Graduate and "INEFS Barcelona - Plan d'Educació Física postgraduate De Estudios" de Catalunya Palau dels Esports Gymnastics Became Barcelona Teatre "Barcelona Teatre de Barcelona and Musical, but closed down Musical" volleyball Palau de la Fencing Exhibitions and shows Lamos Metal·lúrgia Camp Nou Football Football and FC Barcelona "Camp Nou" museum Palau Blaugrana Judo, roller FC Barcelona basketball, “Palau Blaugrana" hockey, handball, futsal and roller taekwondo hockey teams Estadi de Sarrià Football Demolished "Estadi De Sarrià" Real Club de Polo Equestrian, Polo, field hockey, tennis, "Real Club De Polo De de Barcelona modern squash, and swimming Barcelona - pentathlon Introduction" Camp Olímpic de Archery Football and rugby "Camp Olímpic De Tir Tir amb Arc Amb Arc" Pavelló de la Vall Basque Basketball, handball, "Pavelló Municipal d'Hebron pelota, volleyball, soccer, indoor D’Esports De La Vall volleyball cycling and swimming D’Hebron” Tennis de la Vall Tennis Tennis, padel, fitness "Qui Som” d'Hebron Velodrome Cycling Track cycling "Serveis” Estació del Nord Table tennis Fitness club "Municipal Sports Sports Hall Centre - Estació Del Nord." Port Olímpic Sailing Port, restaurants, sailing "Facilities" school Pavelló de la Mar Badminton Rugby, basketball, football "Activitats Habituals Bella and handball Destacades" Estany de Rowing Cycling, rowing, triathlon, “Sports” Banyoles canoeing Camp Municipal Baseball Baseball "Equipaments - Camp
84 de Beisbol de Municipal De Beisbol" Viladecans Canal Olímpic de Canoeing Water sports, golf, "Canal Olímpic De Catalunya volleyball, cycling Catalunya" Circuit de Cycling Motor sports "El Circuit - About Us" Catalunya Estadi de la Nova Football Football "Estadi Municipal De La Creu Alta Nova Creu Alta" Estadi Olímpic de Field hockey Football "L’Estadi Olímpic" Terrassa Estadio Luís Football Football "Estadio De Mestalla" Casanova La Romareda Football Football "Estadio La Romareda" L'Hospitalet de Baseball Football "Estadi La Feixa Llarga" Llobregat Baseball Stadium Palau D'Esports de Handball Handball "Palau D'Esports" Granollers Parc Olímpic del Canoeing Canoeing, kayaking and "Activitats" Segre rafting Pavelló del Club Roller hockey Roller blading, padel, "Els Inicis Del Club Patí Patí Vic tennis and swimming Vic" Pavelló Olímpic de Basketball Basketball and concerts "Pabellón Olímpico De Badalona Badalona." Sant Sadurní Cycling Event took place on a road "Sport" Cycling Circuit – used for transportation
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