DUBLIN NEEDS a directly elected mayor with executive powers and a regional authority to “drive the urban and economic regeneration of the city”, Lord Mayor Andrew Montague of Labour said yesterday.
He was speaking at a reception in the Mansion House for former mayor of Barcelona Pasqual Maragall, who was presented with honorary membership of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), in recognition of his achievements.
Writer Colm Toibín, who lived in Barcelona during the Maragall period, said the way he had planned its transformation made the former mayor “an exemplary Catalan and an exemplary European, and an exemplary politician and an inspiration to the world”.
Mr Maragall (70) retired from politics in 2007 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and has set up a foundation to support those with the condition. He previously served as president of Catalonia’s regional government.
From 1982 to 1997 he was Barcelona’s mayor, and the improvements he initiated led to securing the Olympic Games in 1992. His vision to “turn Barcelona around to face the sea” was substantially realised during his term of office.
“We are paying tribute then to one of the leaders of an heroic generation of public figures in Barcelona who knew how to dream, who knew how to build trust, who knew how to put plans into effect, who knew who to keep trust,” Toibín told a symposium in Liberty Hall.
“We are paying tribute to a politician of considerable skill and a personality who managed, despite his many years in power, to exude a charm which was easy, almost ordinary, and a sense of mission – who built a society by reconfiguring a city.”
His great achievement was to “embody that spirit of pride which Catalans felt about their capital city, and use all of the skills he had learned as an economist and expert on cities to harness that pride and go into action as both planner and politician, as both visionary and pragmatist.”
David Mackay, a Scots-Irish architect who was involved in the regeneration of Barcelona, said politicians needed to work closely with design professionals. “Cities live longer than us so it’s important to hand over the baton of a design process, like a relay-race.”
RIAI president Paul Keogh said he had often noted Maragall’s dictum that “Barcelona sought her future by improvement of her urban quality. The trick was quality first and quality second – a network of plazas, parks and buildings was the cause of our success.”
Mr Montague said the experience of Barcelona showed “a directly elected mayor . . . and a Greater Dublin Authority are needed to drive the urban and economic regeneration of the city”.
He said our fragmented local government “gets in the way of the type of strategic decision-making that’s needed [and] makes it very difficult to plan effectively in the interests of the Dublin region as a whole . . . This is one of the reasons why local government reform is urgently needed.”