Alexandra Delgado interviewed for the report on Madrid's future in Alternativas Económicas

Source:  alternativaseconomicas.es , by Juan Pedro Velázquez-Gaztelu

Plans to build 150,000 homes in the capital unleash fears of a repeat of the housing bubble.

With the coronavirus crisis practically over and the Partido Popular back at the helm of the City Council, Madrid is preparing for a wave of housing construction that is beginning to resemble the boom that caused so much havoc at the beginning of this century. Thanks to the new urban developments activated by José Luis Martínez-Almeida's government, more than 150,000 flats are expected to be built in the coming years, mainly in the south-east of the capital.

The City Council and developers claim that the supply of new housing will benefit all Madrilenians, especially the youngest, because it will help prices to fall throughout the city, while urban planning experts and environmental organisations warn that Madrid risks repeating the mistakes that inflated the housing bubble.

"Behind these developments is speculation, not need," says Nines Nieto, a specialist in urban planning issues with Ecologistas en Acción. "Madrid does not need to build more, but rather to better manage the existing housing stock. Nieto argues that the new developments are at the service of large speculative funds and respond to a city model that is incompatible with the fight against the climate crisis. According to her, the municipal government team is "determined to build every last square centimetre of the municipality" while Madrid is experiencing a housing emergency, with many people evicted from their homes and without resources to pay rent.

Agustín Hernández Aja, professor at the School of Architecture of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), agrees with this opinion. He argues that the City Council has adopted "the liberal position that developers can do whatever they want". In his opinion, what is going to be built are not flats, but "mortgage units", spaces supposedly destined for buyers that do not exist. "These new developments are proof that the money is returning to the brick business and that they have given up on changing the production model," he says.

Alexandra Delgado, professor of Urban Planning at Nebrija University, believes that building more than what is demanded "would be a mistake that we cannot afford", but adds that the real estate bubble at the beginning of the century had very specific characteristics that are difficult to repeat, at least with the same intensity. At that time, Delgado recalls, factors such as the arrival of the euro, the abundance of financing and the deregulation of planning were combined in a way that they are not now.

Most of the new urban developments are located between the M-45 and M-50 ring roads and along the axis of the A-3, which links Madrid with Valencia. The most important in terms of volume is Valdecarros, where 51,000 homes are planned, followed by Los Berrocales, Los Ahijones and El Cañaveral, according to data compiled by the newspaper Cinco Días. The last project to be approved is Madrid Nuevo Norte, formerly known as Operación Chamartín, much closer to the city centre and in which, unlike the others, office buildings predominate.

Missed opportunity

Nines Nieto, of Ecologistas en Acción, points out that during the last legislature, with the left in the City Council, a golden opportunity to rethink the urban planning model of Madrid was lost: "Instead of taking drastic measures to curb speculation, they opted for the minimum confrontation with the builders". Nieto denounces that the new municipal government is changing the use of residential or industrial buildings to transform them into hotels or tourist flats. As a result, the centre is losing inhabitants, because many cannot afford the rents.

Professor Agustín Hernández Aja regrets that, when approving new developments, the municipal authorities have not considered how to help combat climate change: "Has anyone thought about the usefulness and sustainability of all these products? Have they considered any relationship between new developments and global warming? Have they thought about what role Madrid's economy and society should play in the conservation of the planet?

The three experts agree that, instead of building more, it is advisable to manage the existing housing stock better and to make good use of what is already consolidated. Alexandra Delgado favours rehabilitation, the creation of a public rental housing stock, access to housing for people with fewer resources and the mixing of residents with different income levels.

The big question is whether there will be enough demand to absorb so many flats.

Madrid is growing, but not in the capital, but in the metropolitan area.

Madrid is the third most populous urban area in the European Union, after Paris and the Ruhr region in Germany, which includes cities such as Cologne, Dortmund and Düsseldorf. It is also one of the autonomous communities that has experienced the greatest economic, employment and population growth so far this century, but these advances are being recorded in the towns of the metropolitan area, not in the capital.

One of the unknowns of the new developments is precisely whether there will be enough demand to absorb such a large number of homes. It is not going to be easy. If each of the 150,000 flats planned were occupied by three people on average, we would be talking about 450,000 new inhabitants in a city of 3.3 million that has been losing population for years and currently has only 70,000 more than a decade ago. Meanwhile, between 2010 and 2020 the population of the Community of Madrid has increased by 346,000 people.

Rich north, poor south

Critics of the city government's growth model believe that it contributes to widening the gap between the north and west of the city (with higher per capita income, better housing stock and more green areas) and the southern and eastern neighbourhoods. What is really needed, argues Nieto of Ecologistas en Acción, is to meet the demand for more public housing and more facilities and green spaces in the less favoured areas. "The south right now is a dumping ground for facilities that nobody wants, such as incinerators," he says.

For Alexandra Delgado, it is essential to "rebalance the diagonal that crosses Madrid and divides income, employment and facilities through planning. More segregation leads us to an insecure model in which we do not all prosper.