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Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

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Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#251

Post by ethbr1 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #212
ethbr1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to make work economically, other than shuttering for part of the year. Which is why tourist resort towns and stadium areas tend to have a lot of closed shops when they're not "on". Which in turn makes them less attractive for year-round residents, which spirals into intensifying seasonality.

When I think of places dominated by tourism its not the tourism that did it. Its that the tourism is what is left after little other job growth in any other sector after whatever impetus that triggered building the town in the first places ceased to exist.

My personal example would be the old Turner Field in Atlanta.

Major sports team, but the area was a wasteland, because everything was developed around the 50,000 people flooding in for one afternoon. Parking lots, traffic flow, food stands.

The actual neighborhood was pretty dead.

Braves move up to a new stadium in Cobb county, some redevelopment, and now the old neighborhood is flourishing.

Saw the same as a (briefly) Florida resident.

I think it's difficult to establish "normal" development in an area subject to tourism tides, because many of the decisions are mutually exclusive.

Either {support tourism} or {support long term residential development}. And money intersects with politics, so eventually one set of interests win out.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#252

Post by barrkel »

morsch wrote: post #244
jvican wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is most representative to look at the list of densest European cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_cities_... As you see, Spain has 12 cities among the top 38 cities in Europe. L'Hospitalet (an urban centre close to Barcelona) is densest than Paris.

The first of those 12 is Emperador, a city of 692 people, so you have 692 people living very densely. Meanwhile, Paris, two ranks down, has more than 2 million people living at basically the same density. You'd need to account for that. The arbitrary nature of municipal and regional boundaries has always been the bane of comparisons of population density. You could weigh the density by population (effectively giving…

The question being raised in this thread is if Spain has dense housing. And it does. It's clearly very dense.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#253

Post by zrn900 »

elnatro wrote: post #90

All politicians have been saying that a decade at least. In Spain, home owners associations can forbid tourist apartments if they vote it. Why can’t they just do it? Spain is suffering a multi-centralization process. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Malaga are increasing their populations. The rest of the cities are losing inhabitants. Why? Because the job opportunities are not there.

> Spain is suffering a multi-centralization process. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Malaga are increasing their populations. The rest of the cities are losing inhabitants. Why? Because the job opportunities are not there.

The depopulation problem of MOUNTAINOUS regions of Europe, including Spain, has little to do with jobs being available elsewhere. The depopulation in those mountainous regions is due to those regions being undesirable for human habitation all the way, and the recent advent of technology and infrastructure making it possible for people to go to other places. These regions were inhabited only because people had to live there and the human society's infrastructure could not carry millions of people in a central location.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#254

Post by zrn900 »

theragra wrote: post #68
meow_mix wrote: post #9

Will this actually change anything? Curious if folks will just create a black market for these instead (this is basically how ny works)

I have no data, but experience from many other cases shows that economics will take what it wants. Scenarios I can imagine: 1. Black market, which will hurt tourists and locals alike 2. These flats rented to digital nomads instead 3. These flats sold instead, and will be bought buy some hedge funds who will just wait for price appreciation and still asking hight rent But most plausible scenario is mix of the above pl…

> experience from many other cases shows that economics will take what it wants

No such thing. Regulations work.

> Scenarios

No need to 'imagine' things. Wherever they implemented regulations here, they worked. From rent control to airbnb bans. Regulations work as long as you enforce them.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#255

Post by dang »

zrn900 wrote: post #249
hombre_fatal wrote: post #2

It's a short term authoritarian bandaid that doesn't even help that many people, all the while fostering resentment and opening up increasingly authoritarian measures in the future. We should go the asian route of increasing density and size. It's not like Barcelona is fully developed border to border.

> It's a short term authoritarian bandaid That's unintelligible. With that logic, every law and regulation is authoritarian. > all the while fostering resentment and opening up increasingly authoritarian measures in the future Here's the resentment: https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/travel/2023/10/09/fed-u... And yes, the locals want more authoritarianism to keep away the overcrowding tourists, rich foreigners, an…

Please make your substantive points without swipes (like "that's unintelligible" and "people like you").

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Edit: yikes, you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and badly—examples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40743149

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40743095

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40743048

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40675193

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40673804

We have to ban accounts that keep doing this, so please stop doing this, and please make sure you're not using HN primarily for political or ideological battle.

(I suppose I should add the standard disclaimer that no, we don't care about your views. We care about your following the rules and using the site as intended, same as with any other user.)

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#256

Post by barrkel »

iso8859-1 wrote: post #98
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in Barcelona would you increase density? https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/barcelona-pop... from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40752920 ("Barcelona has a 16,000 people per square km density - that’s already one of the highest in Europe.") Capital moves faster than meat space. To defend the human (affordable housing), you have to regulate. The whole "just build more, I want my AirBnB" argumen…

> Where in Barcelona would you increase density? It would make sense to increase density around existing rail infrastructure. Barcelona has 7700 km2 of space, that's a lot. They have only 750 persons per km2 on average. Especially the outskirts of the province have really bad density. For example, Sant Joan de Vilatorrada has only 660 inhabitants per km^2 and it is only 3 km from the railway station, 80 min from the…

Barcelona city proper is in a kind of geographical bowl. Look at it on a terrain map, you can see why the city is dense. It's one of the reasons I really like Barcelona, the forced density of the geography increases the amount and quality of services (especially food!) available.

Sant Joan de Vilatorrada is nowhere near Barcelona city, it's 15 hours walk away.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#257

Post by morsch »

barrkel wrote: post #252
morsch wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first of those 12 is Emperador, a city of 692 people, so you have 692 people living very densely. Meanwhile, Paris, two ranks down, has more than 2 million people living at basically the same density. You'd need to account for that. The arbitrary nature of municipal and regional boundaries has always been the bane of comparisons of population density. You could weigh the density by population (effectively giving…

The question being raised in this thread is if Spain has dense housing. And it does. It's clearly very dense.

No. The assertion was that Spain as a whole is one of the most densly, if not the most densly populated countries in Europe.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#258

Post by TacticalCoder »

nvegater wrote: post #13

A lot of People in “colder” countries with higher purchasing power (specially in Europe) still want to move to Barcelona now that they can work remotely. I wonder how this fact affects the prices compared to tourism apartments.

> A lot of People in “colder” countries with higher purchasing power (specially in Europe) still want to move to Barcelona now that they can work remotely.

That's less and less true. And of those who actually moved to Barcelona, some already left (and companies too) when the independentists started being openly hostile to anything non-catalan.

Why someone with the means to do what is called "geographical arbitrage" would pick Barcelona is totally beyond me.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#259

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kachapopopow wrote: post #83
SeanAnderson wrote: post #25

Barcelona has a population of ~1.7 million. The metro area surrounding is ~5.7 million. The metro area grew by ~100k in the past four years. They are freeing up ~10,000 houses over the next four years with this legislation. Barcelona built ~15,000 new properties between 2011 and 2020. The math don't math. It's a drop in the bucket. The entire impact of AirBnB + all housing built in the last decade does not offset the…

The issue is that the "airbnb" areas drive normal citizens out which during off-seasons drains foot traffic making local shops go out of business which further complicates the problem. Not to mention that most tourists don't even sit around the local area, but rather go to the city attractions. Airbnb and resident housing areas are just not compatible, they have different needs and require different infrastructure. H…

And then there's the effect on property prices.

AirBnBs charge international prices, which creates a property market skewed by international investment.

I live in a tourist area, and prices here have gone up by between 100% at the low end to over 500% at the high end.

These are mostly holiday homes and holiday rentals, and the locals can't afford to live here any more - either renting or buying.

One of the results has been a huge political shift rightwards, with increasing hostility to tourists and immigrants. Of course the far right cynically take advantage of this issue, and of course they have no intention whatsoever of fixing anything.

But the fact that it's an issue at all is causing huge problems.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#260

Post by nielsbot »

Carrok wrote: post #233
jorvi wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with hotel rooms is that they’re more expensive, get much more expensive per additional person, and don’t have the amenities of an appartement. If I’m somewhere with a group for longer than three days, we want to be able to hang somewhere and cook our own food. The only other thing that offers this feature set is private rooms in hostels, and those are both rare and nearly always fully booked. I’m not say…

AirBnBs have also started increasing rates based on extra people. Maybe it's just me, but when I'm on vacation the last thing I want to spend my time doing is dishes. I'd also rather explore where I'm visiting than sitting in some random person's house. Give me a hotel room with turn down service over an AirBnB every time.

I do like that when Airbnb, while there's no room cleaning or room service, you do often get a kitchen which is nice. You can also often stay in a "neighborhood" vs a commercial area.

It does feel like Airbnb is just reinventing hotels tho. (Just like streaming is re-inventing cable and Uber is re-inventing taxis)

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