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Colau to invest €50.9m in suburbs

Barcelona City Council targets 16 neighbourhoods for development plans aimed at reducing social inequalities

The Barcelona City Council will allocate a total of €50.9 million to neighbourhood plans in 2018, a transformational operation in the city which is set to become the most important project in the first term of Ada Colau as mayor. The programme aims to revitalise 16 of the city’s districts which are in a particularly precarious situation from the point of view of social planning. This year’s investment is part of a planned investment of €150 million, which will be will deployed in 354 different projects, aimed at reducing the social gap between districts, one of the challenges Colau has established for the current term.

The design of the development plan began in 2016 and in 2017 an initial investment of €20 million was made with work already underway in Besòs, Ciutat Vella, Sants-Montjuïc and the city foothill neighbourhoods. City councillor Gala Pin, accompanied by the city manager, Jordi Martí, at the head of the project outlined the proposal and demanded that the Generalitat reactivate the Llei de Barris. “As a council, we have allocated €50 million, but could increase our investment if we could rely on the law, since it allowed for extra funding by the two administrations in the districts of our cities most in need. Our hope is , therefore, that the new government of the Generalitat will reactivate the law throughout all of Catalonia,” said Pin.

Martí emphasised that the projects are not simply an investment in construction as the intention of the law was to invest in social, educational and economic development and reduce inequalities between neighbourhoods in municipal areas. The plan is also an attempt to ensure that important infrastructures can be restored in the benefit of the community.

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