Marc Partridge: "It is not about over-investing in infrastructures to be underused, but connected infrastructures are the first step"

You affirm that medium cities are more successful than big ones. Why do you think so?

In my opinion, it becomes increasingly hard to govern yourself as you get bigger; this is one of the largest drawbacks. How do you manage a big city? Medium cities or small cities are much more natural, they do not have to deal with difficult constituencies, to decide where to place roads and infrastructures or to deal with social problems. Large cities must consider not only the city but also its surrounding suburbs, its surrounding regions, which are part of the metropolitan area. In this case, one of the big drawbacks is learning how to better govern cities. I think the first step is to take advantage from them. Some of that depends upon each country is different: how the national government, the central government, interacts with local governments. To the extent that if you have a very centralised government, then I would argue maybe for a little bit more of autonomy in the small regions. However, if it is a federalised system, more centralised regional operations are recommended because many problems are regional, not just in one city, but for the region as a whole.

What future do you foresee for large cities?

Well, I hope a positive one, because we will know how to address this problem. Certainly, cities are increasingly concentrating multiple classes: there are very low classes, in terms of income, and thereʼs a very high class elite; that causes a lot of social tensions and social problems. Large cities do not benefit everybody; they just benefit elite. Therefore, some sort of social compact to ensure that all citizens are benefiting somewhat to the deep benefit of cities becomes more important; especially, with the rise of the service economy, certain financial services and legal services have very wealthy people associated to it. We need to find the ways to spread that out to some extent to ensure that we do not have this kind of social pressures.

What policies are more effective to promote rural areas in a country?

I consider it is crucial to understand how we can better link rural areas with urban areas because it is very difficult to create growth in small world communities. Large businesses would not locate there, higher order occupations would be in the city where there is more opportunity, more educated people; so linking small rural communities with urban setters is one of the best ways to start generating growth in rural areas; or at least, generating that they can live in the countryside and commute into the city.

To have a good connected infrastructure is really important for rural areas. Of course, it is not about over-investing in infrastructures to be underused, but connected infrastructures are the first for that.

How would you characterize Barcelona? What are its strong and weak points?

I would say Barcelona would be on a large side of a large city. On the one hand, Barcelona has a lot of the benefits of having some of the high store occupation; there is great opportunity for people in the world. I think Barcelonaʼs strength is its beauty; it is located on a beautiful place, it has a wonderful climate. Its natural settings are its strongest point. This kind of things is going to pull the smartest, most innovating people here in the long run. On the other hand, Barcelona has some difficulties in moving people around the city, there is congestion, there is pollution, and there are packets of poor neighbourhoods. Some of these things might degrade or hurt the chances of Barcelona being a fast growing city, so what I recommend is to try to understand why a large city seems to have these drawbacks in order to better understand how to do policy.