One of the world’s benchmarks for innovation districts is Barcelona’s 22@, which at the beginning of this century began to transform nearly 200 abandoned hectares of the city into an innovative production center with modern spaces for the strategic concentration of knowledge-intensive activities. Among its architects is the Spanish industrial engineer, consultant, economist and writer, Miguel Barceló, who was even its president between 2004 and 2007. Today he is the advisor of the V21 district that was officially launched this year in the El Salto sector, in Viña del Mar, and about which he comments that “it seems to me a magnificent initiative and on the other hand it is aligned with what the most dynamic cities in the world are doing today from the economic, knowledge and social point of view. Today, there is a great ferment of cities because the innovative district is not transforming a sector, but defining a city model”. – I have been in contact with the district for some time now because I had the privilege of collaborating with a great architect called Luis Alonso, who left us a few months ago. He prepared the masterplan for the district in El Salto, Viña del Mar. As we knew each other from Barcelona, he asked me to make a first analysis of the existing knowledge base, so that’s where I started to learn about the initiative. Then, the 22@ district of Barcelona, where I am in the Council, organized a webinar seminar in the middle of the pandemic directed to Latin American cities and several cities participated, among them Viña del Mar. – I think so, and for several reasons. The first one because of the will that seems to exist in the public-private pact, which is an important condition. Then I think that, in general, the Region of Valparaiso has a very important asset in its university system and that is one of the fundamental bases because the idea is to diversify the economy towards sectors of high added value, to employ talented people and in that sense, the Region has them. – When I was gathering information on different aspects of both the economic structure and the knowledge base, I was very impressed by the fact that in the Region there are 130 thousand students in higher education, representing 11% of Chile’s total, which is a very important figure. In addition, every year some 20 thousand graduates leave the university system, most of whom have to go to work elsewhere, to Santiago and even to other countries (…) The challenge is to create the conditions for an economic activity that will allow this human capital to be employed and to do so with criteria of equity and social balance. – A key element in the success of an innovation district is the public-private pact, that is to say, with only the public administration there is no capacity for investment and development. The 22@ already occupies more than 1.5 million square meters with more than 100 thousand workers and the investment has been mainly private, therefore, this pact is fundamental and at different levels, but also at the level of agreements and promotion of the project. – If we generate 50,000 jobs in the innovative district, which would not be unreasonable to think of that figure, we can create 50,000 or 100,000 more in the service sector. Then, the final beneficiary is the citizen who does not have to migrate and look for qualified jobs elsewhere.
The inhabitant who depends on a seasonal service such as tourism, in the face of an eventuality such as Covid, can have serious problems. – In a first stage, we have to start from our own, from universities, companies, coworkings, which are the starting point. From there, qualified people want to go to these places where they can develop their personal and family life project, and this has been a boom in Barcelona. The 22@ district is today the economic engine of the city.
