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4 days agoI mean they mostly want to get rid of airbnbs, which I think it’s also not fair but that’s Barcelonas main problem. I’d say there should be some zoning rules or limits regarding them. But bans would also just prompt to ways of getting around those bans. I am not a big fan of “blame the system” when it’s people setting up airbnbs as it is more cost effective for them than regular renting. We need to self regulate ourselves somehow — give us another economic or political system, and the same inequalities and abuses will show up, I have not much proof but also no doubt . The system is not the problem, greed is, and it’s not capitalism-induced greed , it’s part of human nature.
Talking about Barcelonas and most cities’ gentrification problem, it’s not capitalism is what I meant for “blaming the system”. Then the other was regarding “regulation”. The incentive could be elsewhere instead, e.g. let BCN be a tourism whorehouse and improve the QOL in the suburbs, connect them with trains, shift big tech companies to relocate with tax benefits etc . It’s not a tourism problem its an everybody wants to be in the same city problem. Just expand what makes BCN amazing outwards . Transport , bike lanes , wide roads and urban planning . It’s like, they made one great plan and they forgot to iterate on it for the current time, and expand it properly. I don’t feel it’s fair to use capitalism as a sort of “swear word” freely . Like you state the problem can be attacked from a lot of angles and it’s not a “capitalism” problem but the sum of relations and norms , wants and needs. If all cities were “not capitalist” there would still be some more coveted than others and that would create a housing problem anyway.