Affordable housing up close in Barcelona: Field notes from the Advanced Cooperation Mission

Barcelona (Spain) | 26 – 28 May

The IURC programme held its Advanced Cooperation Mission in Barcelona, bringing together representatives from Cartagena (Colombia), Concepción (Chile), and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) to explore how Barcelona approaches the affordable housing crisis — from regulatory frameworks and land management to neighbourhood rehabilitation and large-scale urban development.

Over three days, participants combined workshops, site visits and institutional meetings to gain first-hand insight into one of Europe’s most debated urban challenges — and to draw lessons applicable to their own cities.

Day 1 | The right to housing versus the right to profit

The first day opened at the Barcelona City Council, where an introductory workshop covered the city’s affordable housing framework: regulatory tools, multi-level policy approaches, land acquisition and management instruments, and the outsized impact of tourism and short-term rentals on housing affordability. The delegates were particularly interested in how Barcelona’s approach rests on the deliberate political choice that the right to the city and to housing takes precedence over the right to economic exploitation.

From the City Council, the group moved to the Besòs-Maresme neighbourhood for a site visit to ongoing housing rehabilitation projects focused on safety, habitability, energy efficiency and accessibility. What stood out was not the scale of the interventions, but the method behind them: before any physical work begins, the city invests heavily in understanding the communities involved — building trust with local leaders, mapping needs, managing expectations, and accompanying residents through the process.

The day closed with a presentation by BIT-Habitat on Barcelona’s Urban Challenge model and its experimentation sandbox, illustrated through real case studies including the experience of the REARQ research group from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. The session prompted a wider reflection: urban innovation does not always require technological solutions. Sometimes it means using traditional tools more consciously and more inclusively.

Day 2 | Building a neighbourhood from scratch — and at the metropolitan scale

The second day took participants to La Marina del Prat Vermell, Barcelona’s most recent large-scale urban development project, where the challenge of integrating affordable housing into new neighbourhoods is being tackled in real time. A visit to La Chalmeta, a cooperative housing model embedded within the development, illustrated one concrete answer to that challenge — though also raised questions about the tensions that arise when free-market and social housing coexist within the same neighbourhood and how social cohesion must be actively planned for, not assumed.

The afternoon shifted to the metropolitan scale with a workshop at Barcelona Regional on the PDUM — the metropolitan urban planning framework — and its coordination with other instruments and land-use strategies across the wider territory. For delegates from cities grappling with administrative fragmentation and cross-border challenges, the model of a supramunicipal public entity dedicated to territorial planning was a particularly relevant reference: a structure capable of addressing mobility, environmental systems and the labour market in ways that individual municipalities cannot.

Day 3 | Water, innovation districts and the long arc of urban transformation

The final day opened with a presentation by the Municipal Institute of Urbanism (IMU) on sustainable urbanisation — green infrastructure, climate resilience and Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDs) — followed by a site visit to nearby green axes and drainage installations. The discussion quickly became comparative: delegates from Concepción, Cartagena and Rio de Janeiro drew direct parallels with the flooding and wetland management challenges in their own cities.

A visit to the D-HUB offered a cultural interlude through the exhibition Seny i Rauxa, tracing the historical evolution of Catalan architecture from the founding of the ETSAB in 1875 to contemporary practice.

The day concluded with a presentation by 22@ Network on the governance of Barcelona’s innovation district, exploring the relationship between the public sector, business and academia, and the coexistence of economic activity, urban growth and housing. A walking tour through Poblenou, Vila Olímpica and Port Olímpic brought the conversation full circle: from the radical urban transformation triggered by the 1992 Olympics to the most recent regeneration linked to the America’s Cup, Barcelona’s waterfront tells the story of a city that has repeatedly reinvented its relationship with the sea.

Read about the 22@Network experience on their website.

About the IURC LAC Advanced Cooperation Missions

IURC Latin America and the Caribbean, part of the International Urban and Regional Cooperation (IURC) programme, connects cities and regions from Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe to co-create sustainable, inclusive, and innovation-driven solutions. Through peer-to-peer exchange and partnerships, the programme contributes to improving citizens’ quality of life while strengthening global cooperation.

Advanced Cooperation Missions are on-site technical visits that build on the IURC programme’s collaborative and knowledge-sharing approach. They provide cities and regions with the opportunity to further develop the themes explored during the online meetings of the Communities of Practice, refine their cooperation action plans and gain first-hand experience of best practices implemented by the hosting city or region.