BARCELONA, Spain - How can a city resuscitate an entire depressed, old inner-city district, many of its blocks marked by abandoned factories?
Even more challenging: How to transform the same area into a high-powered knowledge hub that adds jobs by the thousands and draws dozens of high-powered national and international firms?
The "free enterprise" American approach might be to bring in the bulldozers, create an industrial park that displaces the old residents and maybe offer companies public subsidies to move in.
Not Barcelona. Ten years ago this entrepreneurial city decided to build a modern "knowledge economy" close to downtown in its old, waterfront Poblenou district, once a leading cotton mill center, renaming it "22@Barcelona, The Innovation District."
Their central idea: Talent is the gold of our time, crucial to building thriving new economic clusters. Talented people (and cutting-edge firms) want lively urban environments instead of the isolation of corporate campuses. They're anxious to brush shoulders with other gifted people from companies, universities and the artistic realm.
So the district has been consciously shaped to include attractive green spaces, restaurants and entertainment, bike lanes, and plentiful public transit both within the area and between it and greater Barcelona.
But to create that environment - and not force out the families and workers living there - the Barcelona politicians decided on an ingenious but highly controlled form of real estate redevelopment.
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