Susana Rowles is a founding member of the Jersey Liberal Conservatives. I do hope that the rest of the party comes with better thinking than this (from the JEP):
"Size is a constraint but 45 square miles of land is more than enough for 106,000 people. Barcelona houses 1.6 million people in a smaller area - and that's before the near ten million tourists it welcomes every year".
Tourism: Not the Whole Picture
The most obvious flaw lies in the figure on tourists, which sounds huge, but clearly do not arrive all at the same time - and yet this is the impression given by this statement.
A lot of the information is available on Wikipedia, but there is clearly some selection. Where is the paragraph there:
In early 2017, over 150,000 protesters warned that tourism is destabilizing the city. Slogans included "Tourists go home", "Barcelona is not for sale" and "We will not be driven out". By then, number of visitors had increased from 1.7 million in 1990 to 32 million in a city with a population of 1.62 million, increasing the cost of rental housing for residents and overcrowding the public places. While tourists spent an estimated €30 billion in 2017, they are viewed by some as a threat to Barcelona's identity.
In fact, to halt the influx, the city has stopped issuing licenses for new hotels and holiday apartments; it also fined AirBnb €30,000. The mayor has suggested an additional tourist tax and setting a limit on the number of visitors.
Feeding the 1.6 million
Another factor of note is that Barcelona has Europe's ninth largest container port, with a trade volume of 1.72 million TEU's in 2013.
To feed the population, it clearly has a supply chain which has plenty of scope. Where pray, does Susana Rowles see the increased imports coming into Jersey for an increased population. Even a few days of bad weather can empty shelves!
"Size is a constraint but 45 square miles of land is more than enough for 106,000 people. Barcelona houses 1.6 million people in a smaller area - and that's before the near ten million tourists it welcomes every year".
Tourism: Not the Whole Picture
The most obvious flaw lies in the figure on tourists, which sounds huge, but clearly do not arrive all at the same time - and yet this is the impression given by this statement.
A lot of the information is available on Wikipedia, but there is clearly some selection. Where is the paragraph there:
In early 2017, over 150,000 protesters warned that tourism is destabilizing the city. Slogans included "Tourists go home", "Barcelona is not for sale" and "We will not be driven out". By then, number of visitors had increased from 1.7 million in 1990 to 32 million in a city with a population of 1.62 million, increasing the cost of rental housing for residents and overcrowding the public places. While tourists spent an estimated €30 billion in 2017, they are viewed by some as a threat to Barcelona's identity.
In fact, to halt the influx, the city has stopped issuing licenses for new hotels and holiday apartments; it also fined AirBnb €30,000. The mayor has suggested an additional tourist tax and setting a limit on the number of visitors.
Feeding the 1.6 million
Another factor of note is that Barcelona has Europe's ninth largest container port, with a trade volume of 1.72 million TEU's in 2013.
To feed the population, it clearly has a supply chain which has plenty of scope. Where pray, does Susana Rowles see the increased imports coming into Jersey for an increased population. Even a few days of bad weather can empty shelves!
Unlike Barcelona, Jersey is an island with much more vulnerable supply chains.
Water Supply
Water Supply
The majority of Barcelona’s tap water comes from the Llobregat river, which originates in the Serra del Cadí and flows into the sea just south of the city. Where's Jersey's large river supplying water here? The inability of Susana Rowles to see that water supply is a limit is a major defect in her argument.
It is the same ignorance which plagues Mark Boleat's suggestion that Hong Kong shows how high density can be achieved - it gets its main water supply piped from a the Dongjiang River in nearby China., a major tributary to the Pearl River.
Jersey Water has said: " Fundamentally, the Island suffers from a lack of adequate water storage relative to the demand, we will therefore be looking to provide increased reservoir storage in other ways and in other locations to provide the future resilience that we need"
But even Barcelona faces problems.
Ten years ago, Barcelona nearly ran out of water. In 2008, reservoirs dipped so low that the Mediterranean city was forced to import drinking water from France. The shortage came amid Spain’s driest year on record..
In the past decade, Barcelona has avoided a rerun of the 2008 water shortfall. Summers in Spain, though, are becoming hotter and drier, while winters are growing less harsh. Precipitation in 2017 was notably light, plunging Spain into its worst drought since it turned to its neighbors for water shipments.
Population Trends in Barcelona
A recent study notes that:
Population trends parallel the recent history of Mediterranean cities. That is, rural migration and concentration of population in large cities until approximately the mid 1970s, and the reverse processes in the 1980s and 1990s. Thus, from centralized compact urban forms and functions, the Barcelona region is undergoing a more dispersed pattern with an increasing presence of features of what we call the diffuse city (or "American model"): low density housing, a communications network built for private transportation, and proliferation of metropolitan sub-centres.
So what would be the equivalent for Jersey - a move to a dispersed pattern in which more housing was built in rural zones outside the main town of St Helier?
Or might it be that to suggest as a model for population growth being a land based city with plenty of room for growth on the periphery (and a first class rail network), is perhaps not the best place for a comparison with a small island without such features?
It is the same ignorance which plagues Mark Boleat's suggestion that Hong Kong shows how high density can be achieved - it gets its main water supply piped from a the Dongjiang River in nearby China., a major tributary to the Pearl River.
Jersey Water has said: " Fundamentally, the Island suffers from a lack of adequate water storage relative to the demand, we will therefore be looking to provide increased reservoir storage in other ways and in other locations to provide the future resilience that we need"
But even Barcelona faces problems.
Ten years ago, Barcelona nearly ran out of water. In 2008, reservoirs dipped so low that the Mediterranean city was forced to import drinking water from France. The shortage came amid Spain’s driest year on record..
In the past decade, Barcelona has avoided a rerun of the 2008 water shortfall. Summers in Spain, though, are becoming hotter and drier, while winters are growing less harsh. Precipitation in 2017 was notably light, plunging Spain into its worst drought since it turned to its neighbors for water shipments.
Population Trends in Barcelona
A recent study notes that:
Population trends parallel the recent history of Mediterranean cities. That is, rural migration and concentration of population in large cities until approximately the mid 1970s, and the reverse processes in the 1980s and 1990s. Thus, from centralized compact urban forms and functions, the Barcelona region is undergoing a more dispersed pattern with an increasing presence of features of what we call the diffuse city (or "American model"): low density housing, a communications network built for private transportation, and proliferation of metropolitan sub-centres.
So what would be the equivalent for Jersey - a move to a dispersed pattern in which more housing was built in rural zones outside the main town of St Helier?
Or might it be that to suggest as a model for population growth being a land based city with plenty of room for growth on the periphery (and a first class rail network), is perhaps not the best place for a comparison with a small island without such features?
In Conclusion
Taking a few superficial aspects of a land based city in Spain as representative of the whole picture, and building an entire argument about population density on a small Island fails once you begin to delve into the details, where it is plain she knows very little. I'm afraid Susana Rowles won't get my vote on this!
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1 comment:
Although Jersey is mostly semi-rural, with a sprinkling of wild('ish) places, it feels congested It's probably quite hard to find many places that are more than 100 metres away from a house. Urban/city environments such as Hong Kong, Barcelona etc have much higher population density but outside this is space. There is precious little space left in Jersey and I think space is a psychological need.
https://youtu.be/PCOWE0EiCyo?t=82
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