The Wall Street Journal dedicates an article to one of the effects of the real estate crisis in Spain: the situation of abandonment in which thousands of houses and large urban developments that began to be built before the end of the party, and which will result in an inheritance of zombie houses affected by the syndrome of the empty building . It is a subject to which we have dedicated a few lines when speaking in this blog about the effects of the crisis in cities. One of these effects is that of the landscape we inherit from half-occupied housing estates, stopped cranes waiting for better times (if they ever arrive), roads to nowhere,metro stations without users and, in short, a legacy that is heavy like each of the bricks that form it and painful as all the bad mortgages it hides.
They have been lost decades; while in other neighboring countries the balance in the construction sector between new construction and rehabilitation activities was maintained, thus creating opportunities to rehabilitate the housing stock that is deteriorating, in our country we have preferred to build brand new urban developments Hoping that one day they would fill up with people. Lost years in which not enough attention has been paid to one of the most urgent reforms that our country has: preferential attention to traditional neighborhoods -both in the historic centers and in the peripheries- that needed a great comprehensive regeneration program in which the built city is only a part of that need for regeneration, which should reach the social, community, commercial scale, etc. Lost years because the industrial economic surplus found compelling financial reasons to go to the construction scale of new construction that we all know.
A problem, therefore, different from the one that arises in the United States, where a deep debate is taking place before the dramatic situation of abandonment of some of the cities that have been in the last decades the industrial engine in the Rust Belt (the belt formed by cities such asDetroit or Flint). These cities have seen their population shrink progressively as families flee an environment that no longer offers them any job opportunities in the manufacturing and automobile industries. Shrinking cities call them. It is a phenomenon that has not happened in our country, at least for the moment, and the population of Spanish cities remains reasonably stable in these years of crisis.
What to do with the spaces that remain abandoned after this flight? Plots that were once parking lots for large shopping centers, or plots waiting for their owner to find a better time to build and develop them. The urban voids are part of any city to a greater or lesser extent, because no urban fabric is always complete. In order to temporarily or even definitively address these gaps, different initiatives have emerged in recent times, some of which are well known internationally and even in Spain we have examples of this type of urban intervention, sometimes without institutional support and seeking from the vindication href=”http://www.euskadinnova.net/en/social-innovation/interviews/public-space-should-flexible-to-allow-citizens-modify/364.aspx” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener “>new ways of using urban spaceand, other times, even with the support of the authorities (as in the case of This is not a solar, in Zaragoza). This is a very necessary citizen and institutional strategy in the current situation in which the municipalities find themselves. The states of abandonment of lots and even commercial premises are spreading throughout the city as the crisis paralyzes buildings and forces businesses to close in central areas and also in the rest of the city’s neighborhoods. We have here a good idea for acting intelligently in these moments of crisis, with at least transitory formulas that make it possible to take advantage of these spaces that once were useful or have never been useful to create opportunities for civic uses or of another nature.
But I’m afraid we don’t have a plan for empty buildings, for buildings that have already been built and that never had users or owners. Is it possible to dedicate to other uses entire buildings in the residential peripheries that have not even been sold? What if two floors of a newly built six-story block are left unused? Zombie buildings, all a waste.
You may also be interested in:
- Is rehabilitation a wise measure against the crisis?
- Why eco-cities will not be the solution
- Europe. Week of cities and urban rehabilitation
- A good idea. Urban Vulnerability Observatory
Photo of the project This is not a solar.