This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at A debate un nuevo modelo de la gestión de las áreas comerciales urbanas

To debate a new model of management of the urban commercial areas

15/07/2011

July 15, 2011

About 100 experts in domestic trade, meeting in early July in Madrid by the Chambers of Commerce, they defended the need to develop a new model of management for urban commercial areas, based on public-private cooperation. The meeting was opened by Manuel Teruel, President of the Council of Chambers, the director-general of internal trade of the Ministry of industry, tourism and trade, Angel Allúe, and the Director-general of trade and consumption of the Generalitat valenciana, Silvia Ordiñaga.

As it was evident during the day, open or urban shopping malls are a modern and viable formula for small businesses to improve their ability to compete, but currently not resolved some key aspects and, in fact, many experiences are serious difficulties for further advanced. Among the main problems identified:

Absence of a legal framework to ensure the cooperation and participation of all sectors and actors of the area.
Multi-year funding framework based on voluntarism, insufficient and too dependent on the contributions public.
Management focused management of the "every day" with limited capacity to raise strategic projects.
Inadequate level of representation, due to the low level of Spanish business associations.

Added to the problems raised is the decline of public subsidies, due to the current problems of financing of local and regional administrations.

Therefore, the experts advocate a new management model that must be based on the following bases:

Model towards self-financing, due to the precarious nature of regional and local finances.
Approach of initiatives based on a common strategic vision that involves the public and private sectors. Companies must have a more active role in improving the business environment as a source of competitive improvement. For its part the public sector must be able to guide these projects to the public interest and the common good.
The development of management with private funding models figures should not assume a substitution of public services.
The organisational figures on which settles the management should be flexible to be able to be adapted to the specific characteristics of each social and economic reality.