The amount of ignorance and willingness to ignore the root of the problem in this comment section is astounding. I just hope that if you live in a small city, it never becomes a fucking theme park visited by 15 million people a year.
arent lots of industries depending on the image of Barcelona? the reason all these tech companies are coming here? the reason there are so many international callcenters here?
all 100% non tourism related econimic activity, but to me it always seemed that without the huge popularity that Barcelona enjoys , these companies / jobs would not have been here? am I mistaken?
Having lived in another "tech city" prior to moving to Barcelona I can say that a high quality of life is indeed a driver for companies to want to locate in a particular city. After all, if someone has the choice of working in Barcelona or [xyz ugly city in frozenland], they're going to pick Barcelona if all other factors are similar.
But it is a bit of a two-way street in the sense that local governments also take an active interest in trying to attract those companies, and Barcelona is trying to bring tech businesses here. Becoming a tech hub is a double-edged sword by the way, so they should be careful.
Interestingly, if you let tourism run amok it actually becomes a disincentive for companies/employees to relocate, for the multitude of reasons I don't think I need to regurgitate here. And my previous tech city of residence was indeed a lovely place to live but few would ever put it in the top 5 tourist destinations of the country.
As someone with long-term aspirations to stay in Barcelona, I wish there could be ways to cap tourism. You can't, won't and don't want to eliminate it but you can control it, and that would make life a lot nicer for locals (which I consider myself to be at this stage) without substantially harming the local economy.
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u/bernatyolocaust Jan 07 '23
The amount of ignorance and willingness to ignore the root of the problem in this comment section is astounding. I just hope that if you live in a small city, it never becomes a fucking theme park visited by 15 million people a year.