L'avinguda Carles Buigas de Salou: estratègies de regeneració ubana. Primer document, anàlisi de l'estat actual

Abstract

Salou is a highly specialize touristic municipality in the Spanish Mediterranean Coast located a hundred kilometers south of Barcelona. Within its narrow boundaries of 1.481 ha Salou supports 7.4 millions of overnight stays per year and is home of 52 hotels. Our case study, the area of Carles Buigas, today the core of the touristic leisure activity within the Salou municipality, was developed during the sixties and seventies as a result of the increasing demand for sun and beach destinations for the European and Spanish middle class. It is significant by the hotel density, 28 from the totalof 52. Forty years later the site requires to be reviewed since there have emerged evidence of urban degradation.

Early analysis in the area explores three topics: common space, hotel facilities and commercial and leisure activities. Results have shown the lack of public and private investment within the area and the risk of obsolescence of the urban and touristic model. In one hand, the hotel facilities have not been recycled or renovated since its first developments, further than imperative maintenance works. In the other hand, there is a lack of public expenditures in the site, limited to minimum infrastructure improvements, contrasting with the administration focus on providing services to the residential areas. Lastly, commercial activities have grown out of control backed by an increasing demand for specialize leisure and night activities fostering low quality facilities concentrated along the main street, the Avinguda Carles Buigas. As a result there is a low quality common space and an urban fabric in process of decay, which has also the handicap of being high stressed for six months per year, during the high season, and leaved empty for the rest of the year.

Under this scenario, there is the urgent need for intervention to shift the current trend of decay – lack of investment – decay. This is an opportunity to act together with stakeholders in the site: local administration, hotel managers, commercial businesses, citizens, tour operators, … Further than the initial analysis this research aims to provide and implement solutions by modifying the site: temporary or permanent actions they have in common the goal of regenerating the area and improving the urban and touristic quality of life.