If London, New York, Antwerp, Buenos Aires (and so on a long etcetera of cities) have their own “Chinatowns”, why would Madrid be any different? And above all, why would it be if we take into account that these neighborhoods tend to be poles of tourist attraction and Madrid is precisely looking for decentralize your flow of visitors? It sounds like pure theory, but the capital’s City Council is betting on just that: boost “a Madrid-style Chinatown” in Usera.
The goal: touristify the area with that new seal.
In a place in Madrid… Today’s User has little (very little) to do with the User of a few decades ago. Over the last few years, this district of Madrid has received a wave of Chinese families who have been transforming part of its streets. And not just because they now reside there thousands of neighbors from the Asian giant (in 2022 the City Council spoke of more than 10,000 people of Chinese nationality; other estimates raise the community to 20,000).
To the first wave of immigrants, who arrived in the 80s and 90s and who dedicated themselves to opening restaurants and bazaars, have been followed by a second, more educated generation that has set up new businesses, such as pharmacies or law firms.
It comes with taking a walk through one of the streets of the neighborhood, such as Dolores Barranco (or directly pull the street view of Google Maps), to see signs in Chinese advertising bars, clinics, shops, agencies, hairdressers, travel agencies, technology stores, food, furniture… and of course pedestrians arriving from the second most populous country on the planet. All between facades, awnings and the occasional business that reminds us that we are in a neighborhood of Madrid.
Madrid’s Chinatown? That is the idea (and the brand) that has been taking shape in recent years in the capital. Both on the street and in the institutions themselves, which have not hesitated to talk about “Chinatown of Usera” either “Madrid-style Chinatow”. After all, it is nothing new. Other large cities, such as London, New York or Vancouver (to name only some cases) have their own Chinatowns, characterized by their proliferation of Asian businesses and which stand out for two reasons: their interculturality and great tourist potential.
Why is it important? Because the latter (tourism potential) is something to take into account in a town like Madrid, which last year alone received more than 11 million of visitors and has seen how mass tourism became a challenge that affects something as essential as its residential market.
Tourism has become a huge businessbut José Luis Martínez-Almeida’s team knows that for keep growing Without suffocating the city, it needs to grow in an orderly manner. And one of its great bets to achieve this is the “decentralization” of the flow of visitors, ensuring that tourists go beyond the Retiro, Sol or the Royal Palace and expand with a “balanced distribution.”
To achieve this, the city has some important assets, such as new itinerariesthe bet on Formula 1 and… (exactly!) the “Chinatown-Usera”.
What do you have in mind? Convert a part of Usera into “the new ‘Madrid Chinatown'”, as advertisement the Madrid City Council in 2022, when it advanced part of its plans for the area: opting for the decoration of the environment, delimiting the entrance and exit with large arches designed by the Chinese community, pedestrianizing Dolores Barranco street and improving some squares. Initiatives that will favor pedestrians and, Cybele reasons“will boost trade.”
Since then the project has continued to advance in several phases to extend almost two kilometers (1.7km) between the Plaza del Hidrogen, the market and Madrid Río with a total investment that approaches nine million of euros.
What are you looking for? “One of the most unique aspects of the remodeling will be the installation of elements that reinforce the identity of the environment as ‘Chinatown’ through the incorporation of specific furniture and cultural references in pavements and signs,” pointed out the City Council in May of last year, when it announced the second phase of the project. Among the strengths of the project, he emphasized that it had been carried out “with the involvement of the Chinese community.”
Do you have a tourist focus? Yes. Although that is not the only spirit of the project, the City Council itself recognizes that it reflects a large part of its reason for being. “It seeks to reinforce the identity of the neighborhood as a place of residence for an important part of the Chinese community, favoring the integration of some of its cultural features with the traditional ways of life of the neighbors with the complementary objective of progressively decentralizing the city’s tourism, which mostly goes to central districts,” claims the Consistory.
Not everything has been easy. Madrid has seen difficulties to find companies interested in manufacturing the access arches, a key part of the project and which identify the Chinese neighborhoods in other cities, such as London or New York.
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Is there more on the table? Yes. On Sunday elDiario.es revealed that not everything will be a pedestrian promenade and decoration with Asian echoes. The City Council also plans a “tourist quality” program that will have as its highlight a “Chinatown de Madrid” seal, according to the newspaper after consulting the contract of the Usera Board.
Among other issues, the idea is to assess the quality of certain businesses in the neighborhood (there are at least 280 “with tourist potential”), help them improve and reward those that meet their standards with the quality badge.
The objective, collect the sheetsis to “position Usera as an attractive destination for attracting family, cultural and gastronomic tourism” and “attract and capture new local, national and foreign audiences.” All while works progress for the almost two kilometer walk from Madrid Río and the installation of the first arch. The remodeling represents an opportunity for the neighborhood, although there are those who already warns that Usera aspires to coexistence, not to be a touristized “ghetto.”
Images | Txemari. (Navarra) (Flickr) and Madrid City Council
Via | elDiario.es
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Xataka
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Carlos Prego
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