If you don't explain it to me
If they don't explain to me what it means, what advantages it has, and what it can mean to live in a large metropolitan area of Palma, right off the bat, I don't want to live there. I don't want to be part of it.
Those of us who live in a village – even those who live there because they have no other choice – usually still want the advantages of living in a village. A certain human scale. A little distance. The feeling, even if it's increasingly fragile, that not everything is a continuous city. That there is still some difference between leaving Palma and arriving in Llucmajor, Marratxí, or Calvià.
It is now announced that these municipalities are to become part of a large metropolitan area. And it is probably true that, in many aspects, they already are. But one thing is the functional reality and another is to assume, without even discussing it much, that we stop being towns to definitively become the urban periphery of Palma.
That is why I am asking for explanations. What do we gain? What services will we have? What concrete improvements will reach those of us who live in the metropolitan area of Palma? Because, seen from here, the feeling is rather that the towns add people, but they are emptying of services. Llucmajor, without going any further, has long been losing basic services such as bank offices. They are going to Campos, perhaps because the ‘Campos power’ has no stopping or perhaps because they already consider Llucmajor a suburb of Palma, while Campos continues to be, in everyone's eyes, the first town-town of Migjorn.
I wonder if there is not, in effect, a real risk of suburbanization. And I want them to explain to me if this new metropolitan conception will mean even more urban growth between Palma and the surrounding municipalities. More continuous urban area. More disappearance of natural distances between nuclei.
Furthermore, the future train line to Migjorn is, without a doubt, good news, long-awaited. An evident collective benefit. But, right now, it would also be advisable for them to explain to us whether it will only serve to improve mobility or if it will end up becoming the axis of a new line of urbanization.
And above all, I want them to explain to me what will happen to the services in the towns. What will be left for the people who live there? What good will be added to what they already have? Because if we are realistic, almost all of Mallorca is already and already functions as a large metropolitan area. A very significant part of the territory is urbanized or inhabited by rather dense scattered settlements. People live in one place, work in another, and consume in a third. And, if this is the reality, what needs to be done is to think about services, public transport, and territorial balance for the entire island, to be able to live better, for everyone.
What I don't quite understand is why this metropolitan condition seems to only affect the towns bordering Palma. And if we are not to suffer it, then explain to me well, what will we gain.