Las ayudas a la rehabilitación, ¿claves para revitalizar el sector inmobiliario?

Los expertos abogan por medidas que estimulen la remodelación de las viviendas usadas, las que menos están sufriendo los efectos del estallido de la burbuja

Articulo Original Unai Mezcua / Madrid día 03/06/2013

 

kike taberner Obras de rehabilitación en un edificio de Valencia

El sector inmobiliario español es un barco que continúa hundiéndose, pero los expertos recuerdan que para taponar una de sus vías de agua bastaría con apoyar, mediante medidas de estímulo a la rehabilitación, uno de los subsectores que parece estar superando los efectos del estallido de la burbuja inmobiliaria: la vivienda usada.

 

Lo advertía el pasado jueves el presidente de la Confederación Nacional de la Construcción (CNC) Juan Lazcano, quién recordaba en un acto organizado por la Cámara de Contratistas de Castilla y León que hay más de diez millones de edificios anteriores a 2001. «El sector de la edificación, que produce empleo con mucha rapidez, tiene que ir por el camino de la renovación y regeneración», sentenciaba.

Y es que en plena crisis inmobiliaria y de crédito, los compradores prefieren acceder a una vivienda usada que arriesgarse —y pagar más— por una nueva. Así, según la estadística de Transacciones Inmobiliarias del Ministerio de Fomento, mientras que la compraventa de vivienda nueva se redujo en el último trimestre de 2012 un 10,17% con respecto a 2011 (con un total de 114.887 transacciones) por el contrario las compraventas de vivienda usada aumentaron un 11,53%. 

 

No obstante, el paso del tiempo deja mella en las edificaciones añejas, cuyas condiciones de habitabilidad quedan seriamente disminuidas. Por ello, tanto la oposición como el Gobierno y los expertos abogan por extender las ayudas a la rehabilitación y así, fomentar aún más estas transacciones. La última en hacerlo ha sido la ministra de Fomento, Ana Pastor, quién el pasado jueves recordaba que el nuevo Plan de Vivienda que el Ejecutivo aprobó el pasado cinco de mayo está dirigido «al alquiler y la rehabilitación», y pretende crear 100.000 nuevos puestos de trabajo gracias a una dotación de 2.400 millones de euros, de los que 627 irán a fomentar «el estado de conservación del parque de viviendas, la accesibilidad de los edificios y su eficiencia energética». 

El nuevo Plan de Vivienda dedica 627 millones a la rehabilitación

En la misma línea se pronunciaba el martes Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, quién advertía que «No podemos olvidarnos de la construcción», y afirmaba que, ya que «nunca más vamos a volver a construir 600.000 viviendas», el Estado sí puede invertir en rehabilitación «para hacer despegar al sector de la construcción, sin el cual difícilmente vamos a crear empleo en cantidad en nuestro país». Para ello el secretario general del Partido Socialista proponía añadir al paquete de medidas del Ejecutivo un mayor apoyo a través del Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO) y una revisión de la fiscalidad «para flexibilizar» las condiciones de aplicación del IVA en estos trabajos.

En la buena dirección

A juicio de los expertos, las medidas van en la buena dirección aunque no supondrán un auténtico revulsivo. «Fomentar la rehabilitación está bien, porque en muchas zonas hay un parque bastante deteriorado de vivienda usada, y es necesario que los que vayan a rehabilitar tengan dinero para hacerlo», explica Óscar Martínez, presidente de la Asociación Profesional de Expertos Inmobiliarios (Apei). «Sin embargo, el mayor problema actual para la salida de los pisos que hay en stock en este momento es que no hay dinero, y no lo hay porque no hay trabajo». Aún así, el experto valora positivamente «cualquier medida que sirva para potenciar el sector».

En términos similares se pronuncia Manuel Gandarias, director del servicio de estudios de Pisos.com, quién también recuerda que otra iniciativa que estimulará el sector es la entrada en vigor del certificado energético este sábado, la cual «creará un nuevo mercado y un nuevo subsector dentro del inmobiliario, que generará nuevos ingresos». Pero como él sentencia: «La rehabilitación es un sector dentro del inmobiliario que está funcionando relativamente bien precisamente porque la gente no está comprando, sino rehabilitando aquellos pisos que ya tienen un cierto tiempo. Sin lugar a dudas, cualquier medida que se proponga es bienvenida»

What Exactly Is A Smart City?

Having worked in the smart cities space for several years now, I am encouraged by the growth of the sector and the pace of technological advancements being developed for urban environments. However, I believe that the smart-cities movement is being held back by a lack of clarity and consensus around what a smart city is and what the components of a smart city actually are.
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See our rankings of the smartest cities on the planet here.
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While some people continue to take a narrow view of smart cities by seeing them as places that make better use of information and communication technology (ICT), the cities I work with (and most of the participants in the #smartchat, a monthly Twitterchat about smart cities held on the first Wednesday of each month) all view smart cities as a broad, integrated approach to improving the efficiency of city operations, the quality of life for its citizens, and growing the local economy.

Later this year, I’ll publish my annual rankings of smart cities here on Co.Exist. In order to improve them, I have been working on a new rubric for smart cities, that I call the Smart Cities Wheel.

The Smart Cities Wheel.

This model has been inspired by the work of many others, including the Center of Regional Science at Vienna University of Technology, Siemens’ work with the Green City Index, and Buenos Aires’ “Modelo Territorial” among others.

Most cities can agree that there is real value in having a smart economy, smart environmental practices, smart governance, smart living, smart mobility, and smart people. Within each of these aspirational goals, I have included three key drivers to achieving the goal. There are over 100 indicators to help cities track their performance with specific actions developed for specific needs.

Let’s walk through a high-level example of how a real city could use the Smart Cities Wheel to develop and implement a smart cities strategy.
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Step 1: Create a Vision with Citizen Engagement
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Vancouver’s Mayor Robertson, and many before him, have sought to take leadership in the green cities arena. Mayor Robertson and his Greenest City Action Team engaged 30,000+ citizens in a process designed to establish a 2020 goal for the city. The city used “social media and digital technologies to spark citizen-led public-engagement activities like kitchen table discussions at private homes, online discussion forums and workshops at community centres,” according to Straight.com. I participated in this process, including speaking on the plan’s behalf to the Vancouver City Council.

The result is the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, which has set a clear goal for the city to become the greenest in the world by 2020. Vancouver aspires to lead the world in at least one of the six aspirational goals of the Smart City Wheel (Smart Enviro).

Smart cities would also make use of the latest technology to acquire citizen input, like CivicPlus, which offers a range of software and mobile tools for cities to communicate and engage citizens in a dialog about city projects (Castle Rock, Colorado used CivicPlus to get input on the plans for a new city park).
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Step 2: Develop Baselines, Set Targets, and Choose Indicators
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Before creating numerical targets for achieving a smart city vision, it is helpful to actually benchmark where you are. Let’s take Smart Mobility as an example. The Smart Cities Wheel has three key drivers for Smart Mobility: mixed-modal access; prioritized clean and non-motorized options; and integrated ICT.

Each city has its own mobility needs and challenges based on density, topography, existing infrastructure, etc., and while they can learn from each other, cities must develop their own benchmarks and targets around areas of need and opportunity.

It is impossible to overlook Copenhagen’s efforts to promote and prioritize cycling. In 1981 the city developed its first cycling plan and it has been evolving its cycling and mixed-modal goals since 2002.

Before establishing a forward-looking target, cities must establish the baseline. Copenhagen has been measuring cycling and mixed modal use for decades. Now the city has a target indicator: to achieve 50% of all trips to work or school by bike by 2015. The city has been making significant progress towards this goal, having already achieved 37% in 2009. Copenhagen also recently collaborated with MIT to create The Copenhagen Wheel, a hybrid bike wheel that leverages sensors in a bike wheel to monitor pollution, traffic congestion, and road conditions in real time. This is an example of an action within the other smart mobility driver--integrated ICT.
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Step 3: Go Lean
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In a previous post, I discussed how cities could and should embrace lean startup principles. Once a city has established quantifiable goals and selected the indicators to measure its progress, it needs to snag some early wins while also building plans for longer-term actions.

The journey to becoming a smart city will stall without a major commitment to supporting efficient, multi-modal transit. Electric vehicles and the appropriate infrastructure appear in many smart-city strategies. However, few places have the resources or demand to install EV charging stations throughout the city. It makes sense for a city to start with a pilot project as a way to get feedback on their hypothesis that by putting charging stations in a particular location, the stations will be used and will actually grow the amount of EV vehicle purchases by citizens living or working in the area.

Toronto just announced a pilot charging station program at a cost of $65,000 to the city. Councillor Mike Layton recognizes the benefits of this small-scale action: “We all know that this is the direction that singular vehicle transport is going in," said Layton in the National Post. "Why we wouldn’t at least try out something at very limited cost to the city, to get ready for the revolution that is going to happen, is beyond me.”

Smart cities are not one size fits all. Yet, the smart-cities movement could benefit from frameworks like the Smart Cities Wheel that allow a common language to develop amongst citizens, city staff, mayors, and the private sector.

Written by: Boyd Cohen

Before you start pushing for smarter cities, it helps to know exactly what you’re advocating for.

The Top 10 Smart Cities On The Planet

Last year, I spent considerable time researching best practices for climate resilient cities--an endeavor that culminated in what I believe was the first ever global ranking of resilient cities. Now, after extensive research on smart cities initiatives around the globe, I have developed what may be the first ever global rankings of smart cities. 
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A note on methodology: There are many other rankings that are relevant to this conversation. I leveraged about a dozen global and regional rankings of smart-city components in order to develop a global ranking of smart cities. I took into account the Innovation Cities Top 100 Index from 2thinknow to get a fair comparison of the level of innovation in top global cities. I also used more well-known rankings of the quality of life of cities, as well as the Siemens regional rankings of green cities, the digital city rankings of Digital Community for cities in the U.S. (indicated as DC in the table), and the IDC rankings of smart cities in Spain (indicated as IDC in the table). Finally, I used the digital governance in municipalities worldwide study to compare cities on their innovative use of ICT. I am including a table which summarizes the rankings used to develop this first global ranking of smart cities. The term "smart cities" is a bit ambiguous. Some people choose a narrow definition--i.e. cities that use information and communication technologies to deliver services to their citizens. I prefer a broader definition: Smart cities use information and communication technologies (ICT) to be more intelligent and efficient in the use of resources, resulting in cost and energy savings, improved service delivery and quality of life, and reduced environmental footprint--all supporting innovation and the low-carbon economy.
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THE TOP 10 SMART CITIES:
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1.) Vienna. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, as going into the research I had not heard much about Vienna as a smart city. But Vienna was the only city that ranked in the top 10 in every category: innovation city (5), regional green city (4), quality of life (1) and digital governance (8). Vienna is establishing bold smart-city targets and tracking their progress to reach them, with programs like the Smart Energy Vision 2050, Roadmap 2020, and Action Plan 2012-2015. Vienna’s planners are incorporating stakeholder consultation processes into building and executing carbon reduction, transportation and land-use planning changes in the hopes of making the city a major European player in smart city technologies.

Image by Yaisog Bonegnasher, licenced under CC BY-SA 2.0

2.) Toronto. The highest rated smart city in North America, Toronto also scores pretty well across the board. Recognizing its importance in the movement, IBM recently opened a Business Analytics Solutions Center in Toronto. Toronto is also an active member of the Clinton 40 (C40) megacities, which seek to transition to the low-carbon economy. The private sector in Toronto is collaborating too, creating a Smart Commute Toronto initiative in the hopes of increasing transit efficiency in the metro area. Toronto also recently began using natural gas from landfills to power the city’s garbage trucks. That’s smart closed-loop thinking.

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3.) Paris. As is typical of sustainability-related rankings, Europe fared well. Paris was highly rated in several categories including innovation (3), green cities in Europe (10), and digital governance (11). Paris was already on the world map for its highly successful bike sharing program, Velib, and just last month, the mayor launched a similar model for small EVs called Autolib, which currently has 250 rental stations.
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4.) New York. New York scored higher than most other cities in the ranking in all of the categories outside of quality of life, where it ranked a miserable 47th. New York partnered with IBM in 2009 to launch the IBM Business Analytics Solution Center to address “the growing demand for the complex capabilities needed to build smarter cities and help clients optimize all manner of business processes and business decisions.” In New York, IBM is already helping the city prevent fires and protect first responders as well as identify questionable tax refund claims--a move that is expected to save the city about $100 million over a five-year period.

Images: Venturebeat

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5.) London. The UK capital also scored relatively high across the board. London has been well-recognized for some of its sustainability innovations (i.e. congestion tax) and its robust transit system. The city will soon be home to Smart Cities research center housed at Imperial College, which will leverage transport, government, business, academic and consumer data in hopes of making the city more efficient and innovative. Just the other day, London announced a partnership with O2 to launch the largest free Wi-Fi network in Europe.

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By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter

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6.) Tokyo. Tokyo is the first Asian city on this list, scoring well in the innovation (22) and digital city (15) categories. Last year, the city announced plans to create a smart town in the suburbs. In partnership with Panasonic, Accenture, and Tokyo Gas (among others), the eco-burb will contain homes that integrate solar panels, storage batteries, and energy efficient appliances all connected to a smart grid. Tokyo is also focused on promoting smart mobility solutions.

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7.) Berlin. Berlin also performs well across the board, with good scores in innovation (14), green-ness (8th in Europe) and quality of life (17). In collaboration with Vattenfall, BMW, and others, Berlin is testing out vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies in the hopes of creating a virtual power plant from electric vehicles.
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www.eu-smartcities.eu

8.) Copenhagen. Lately, it seems Copenhagen has been doing a lot right. It was rated number one on the green scale in Europe by Siemens and also achieved number one ranking in my global resilient cities ranking last year. All with good reason: Copenhagen is taking a real leadership role on sustainable innovation. The city has committed to carbon neutrality by 2025 and 40% of its citizens regularly commute via bicycle. Furthermore, I was quite impressed with the way their mayor, Frank Jensen, recently articulated the role of cities as growth engines and the potential to stimulate the economy through cleantech innovation. 

                              

9.) Hong Kong. Hong Kong scored quite well in key areas, including the digital governance ranking (3). However, its quality-of-life score (70) dropped the city down to ninth in my ranking of smart cities. Hong Kong is experimenting with RFID technology in its airport, as well as throughout the agriculture supply chain. The city has also been a leader in the use and adoption of smart cards, which are already used by millions of residents for services like public transit, library access, building access, shopping, and car parks.
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10.) Barcelona. Barcelona was recently ranked the number two smart city in Spain in the IDC report, and with good reason. The city is a pioneer in smart city and low-carbon solutions. It was among the first in the world to introduce a solar thermal ordinance about a decade ago, recently launched the LIVE EV project to promote the adoption of EVs and charging infrastructure, and the city also recently announced a major partnership to develop a living lab for smart-city innovation.

Fuente: www.inmodiario.com

There were many other strong candidates which are runners-up in this first ranking, including Amsterdam, Melbourne, Seattle, São Paulo, Stockholm, and Vancouver.

Pundits and industry insiders expect smart cities to become a sizable market, with projections of nearly $40 billion spent on smart-cities technologies by 2016. And real estate experts predict that smart cities will in the future be attractive to the educated work force and will therefore become real-estate gold. All reasons enough to get on the smart-city bandwagon. Who knows? Maybe next year your city could crack the top 10 rankings.

Written by: Boyd Cohen

Before you start pushing for smarter cities, it helps to know exactly what you’re advocating for.

If Your City Were Wrecked by "Totalitarian Urban Planners"

¿Y si su ciudad fuera destruída por  "Planificadores urbanos totalitarios"?

 By Emily Badger Mar 13, 2013

portmanteau.ro

Romanian authoritarian ruler Nicolae Ceauşescu infamously left a heavy mark on the capital city of Bucharest with a massive urban planning scheme known as the Centrul Civic. In the 1980s, the project displaced 40,000 people, demolished churches and monasteries in the way, and replaced it all with 8 square kilometers of communist-era concrete buildings and government complexes in the heart of what had been a historic city.

One of the new monuments, the 3.7 million square-foot Palace of the Parliament, is thought to be the largest administrative building in the world, and it anchors the Centrul Civic along a dramatic axis in much the same way that the U.S. Capitol does in Washington, D.C. To this day, the palace and the brutally rebuilt urban fabric around it remain “perhaps the most violent scar left by a totalitarian regime,” in the words of Bogdan Ilie and Dan Achim.

The two have built a depressingly dramatic web project illustrating the scale of this exercise in totalitarian urban planning when transposed onto other cities (hat tip to Google Maps Mania for directing us to it). Write Ilie and Achim of the Centrul Civic (the bold emphasis is theirs):

This project is our baggage, the people of Bucharest’s baggage, and the question that we started with was “What would happen if we were to take this baggage with us through the world?

Well, this is what it would look like in Washington:



And Toronto:



And Dallas:

         

The scale of the irreparable damage makes most regrettable American urban renewal schemes look modest in comparison. The web project, at portmanteau.ro, even calculates the share of local citizens that would be displaced in any city (based on local population density) by such a grandiose rewriting of the urban map.

Top map is taken of Portland, Oregon.

Emily Badger is a staff writer at The Atlantic Cities. Her work has previously appeared in Pacific Standard, GOOD, The Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area. 

SOBRE LA NECESARIA REVISIÓN Y MODIFICACION DE LA ESTRUCTURA TERRITORIAL NACIONAL

      Para el desarrollo de éste artículo, no voy a andar con subterfugios literarios entre el termino Nación, Estado, o Realidades Históricas, pues le pese a quién le pese, y más allá de la vagas diplomacias para no herir las nuevas susceptibilidades políticas de estas últimas décadas, constituimos una Entidad claramente definida en su diversidad y riqueza cultural, su población, actividades comerciales y económicas y sus flujos demográficos establecidos a lo largo y ancho del territorio, según la demanda y la oportunidad laboral del momento; En un marco abierto, permeable y complementario, nada forzado y amablemente reconocible aún con las singularidades propias de cada lugar.

     También sería estéril,  hablar en éste momento de los flujos migratorios durante los siglos anteriores: Repoblación, emigración, movilidad geográfica interior y de las modernas colonizaciones, ya que disgustaría en lo argumental, a muchos intereses parciales o secesionistas, por la heterogeneidad de los emplazamientos y la artificialidad de las reclamaciones históricas en muchos otros casos.

     La necesaria reforma de la Estructura Territorial de nuestro País, no sólo obedece ya a la caducidad del antiguo modelo administrativo en cuanto a la división. Tampoco a la merma o crecimiento demográfico de nuestras poblaciones, ni siquiera a la actual crisis o cambio de modelo económico del que estamos siendo protagonistas. Responde, más a la evolución de los modelos de gestión administrativa, la excelencia en muchos casos de las infraestructuras y comunicaciones, la globalización del territorio y la racionalización y necesario equilibrio de los servicios dispuestos y viabilidad de sus presupuestos.

Local Council Boosts Speed of Responses and Resolutions with KANA CRM Platform

       La proximidad de muchos núcleos de población, separados por “fronteras urbanas", donde la acera de una calle limita la competencia administrativa, o aquellos en los que la cercanía o conveniencia del ciudadano le hace inclinarse hacia una u otra área de su geografía para su comodidad.

“Vistabella- Santa Cruz de Tenerife,  es uno de esos barrios-frontera donde nadie tiene claro en qué municipio está, hasta el punto de que hay vías en las que los vecinos pagan la basura a La Laguna y la recoge un camión de Santa Cruz. Un taxi cobra más si el cliente se baja en la acera derecha en lugar de la izquierda y los taxistas recorren la zona de los santalaguneros con temor a equivocarse, pues avanzar un metro puede implicar una disputa con los de la otra localidad o una sanción para el conductor.”

      O la atomización del territorio por erróneas políticas urbanísticas, potenciando y manteniendo servicios y administraciones en áreas despobladas, de exclusiva actividad agrícola-industrial, o de ocupación y afluencia vacacional o temporal. Obligándose a proveer, por imperativo del legislador, de una serie de estándares de “Calidad Urbana” y de “Provisión de servicios”, muchos de ellos baldíos.

    Otro problema es el endémico mal de la burocratización hasta niveles de acupuntura, en donde estructuras funcionariales y políticas se solapan, multiplican y vuelven a subdividirse en otras nuevas, bajo etiquetas, contenidos y ámbitos de acción, complementarios, repetitivos o incluso extravagantes, a costa de los presupuestos de las administraciones.

The Telegraph. Photo PA

        Además la implantación del modelo Autonómico, como elemento descentralizador de la Administración General, no ha hecho más que agravar con la asunción de competencias de las CCAA y su interpretación en sus diferentes implementaciones en el territorio, por encima en muchos casos, de las garantía y reconocimiento que la Carta Magna otorgaba a los municipios, sin eliminar su sentido y necesidad, vaciando significativamente la independencia económica y competencial de éstos últimos.

     La instauración por parte de nuestros gobernantes y posterior demanda generalizada de nuestra ciudadanía, de un modelo de “Calidad de Vida” basado en el reclamo y proximidad de unos “estándares” de Servicio Público, con independencia “mononuclear”, de todo tipo: Sanitarios, recreativos, culturales, docentes, administrativos, de transporte, … De imposible financiación en muchos casos y elevado coste de mantenimiento en otros, tanto en el continente y contenido, como en la  asunción y mantenimiento de los puestos de trabajo dispuestos. 

         Las actuales "orientaciones de la política nacional", al menos hasta ahora, no hablan aún de la necesaria Racionalización de la estructura municipal, ni de la necesaria Agrupación Territorial por Prestación de Servicios, ni de la revisión de los Ámbitos Comarcales/Territoriales y el papel de las Diputaciones.

         Tampoco han llegado a la conclusión de que Rentabilizar la Provisión de los Servicios Municipales no es más que un paso en el concepto de Eficiencia, (Aunque se pueda permitir Proveer el Servicio, no supone esto que éste sea necesario, ni que no sea superfluo, ni que el ámbito no deba traspasar el territorio pre-asignado para compensar otros déficit en el área de posible influencia). De la necesaria despolitización de los cuadros de intermediación técnicos, mejor no hablamos...

Council-decision-making Australia 2009

        No se trata de apoyar voluntarismos por parte de las mancomunidades o municipios, se trata de una imperativa regulación de la necesaria reducción/simplificación de la estructura territorial político-administrativa para acercarse a un funcionamiento equilibrado en personal, disposición de medios, racionalización de servicios, costes y estratégias. 

        Las tablas que aporto, no son más que un punto más de partida, el económico, para reflexionar sobre la viabilidad del Sistema Actual, el coste globalizado que supone el mantenimiento del actual modelo territorial, y su peso fiscal que ineludiblemente soporta el ciudadano. Su pormenorización, por municipios, posible gracias a los datos publicados del Ministerio, aunque mayoritariamente no consolidados, nos ofrecería un panorama bastante crítico en muchos de ellos, por la artificialidad y empecinamiento en muchos casos de la financiación de éste modelo.

 

La financiación de la estructura actual, supone más del 25% del producto interior bruto/Pais en el mejor de los casos y con incidencia particular y crítica según el ámbito administrativo.
 

Este artículo, solo pretende aportar algunos argumentos para la reflexión y análisis por parte de nuestros políticos y a nosotros mismos desde las bases ciudadanas, y para que entremos en el debate de ésta necesaria reforma, de un Sistema de Administración Territorial actual de difícil justificación y mantenimiento.

Martin Sainz-Trápaga Castell