THE SUPERBLOCKS OF BARCELONA: HOW URBAN STREETS ARE BEING TRANSFORMED INTO LIVELY, GREEN AND HEALTHY PLACES

Since the origin of the city, the streets have been the central place of urban vitality. The place of meeting and exchange in the broadest sense. The streets have also been the place of mobility, of movement, but in a way that is compatible with other activities such as children’s play, recreation, meetings, strolls, celebrations, rest, popular festivals, cultural activities and even protests and riots. In other words, the street is the place where real urban life takes place, where people become citizens, where the city makes sense as a collective space.

THE CAR-CENTRIC CITY

Unfortunately, the industrial city and especially the appearance of private cars meant the radical transformation of the streets. The obsession with a functional, productive and efficient city turned the streets into a mere place for mobility and transport, dominated and occupied by motor vehicles. Asphalt appeared, community life disappeared from neighbourhoods, the air became polluted, noise and accidents increased, and an increasingly individualistic and solitary lifestyle took hold. Then came the impacts of climate change, making even more evident the need for a profound review of what our streets and urban lifestyles should be.

RETHINKING URBAN ROADS

It is clear the streets need to be redefined as liveable public spaces, as community spaces, as the extension of housing, inclusive spaces that boost the local life of neighbourhoods, as a new healthy built environment, but how? In Barcelona, the superblock strategy has made it possible to initiate a process of transformation of its streets into a new one.

With a dense and compact urban fabric, with public facilities well distributed throughout the city, we can say that Barcelona is already a city of proximity. Nevertheless, it is a city with some major problems in its public space. There is a significant deficit of green spaces, with a total average of only 7 m2 of green space per inhabitant. There are no large parks in Barcelona, only a few medium-sized ones, which is why we often say that Barcelona is a city essentially made up of streets and squares. There is a serious problem of pollution, both atmospheric and acoustic, due to a mobility model that continues to prioritise the use of the car in the streets. Moreover, the urban fabric is very poorly adapted to the new climatic conditions, which already suffer from the heat island effect.

Therefore, if the city wants to improve its environmental and health conditions by increasing urban greenery and reducing pollution and heat, it has no other solution than to transform its street network. This is why the superblocks strategy makes the most sense in a city
like Barcelona, and perhaps why it was born there.

WHAT IS THE SUPERBLOCKS STRATEGY?

The Superblocks strategy is based on the transition to a more efficient mobility model, a mobility that pollutes less and takes up less room. This can only be achieved by reversing the current situation and giving priority on the streets to pedestrians, bicycles and public transport over private cars. In this way we can reduce the number of streets that are necessary for through traffic and convert those that are not necessary into ‘green axes’, streets that can become a new type of street, adapted to climate change, with better environmental and health conditions, with new spaces that promote community life.

In Barcelona, the model began to be applied in various pilot experiences in two neighbourhoods, in 2016 in Poblenou and in 2018 in Sant Antoni. In 2019, the collected data showed the number of cars and pollution had been significantly reduced, and that social activities in the street had multiplied. So it was decided to scale up the idea to the whole city and accelerate the transformations. The proposal ‘Green Axes’ was presented, identifying on a map all th streets that would not be needed for through traffic mobility. This network is a new green and social infrastructure for the city as a whole, providing not only new conditions of proximity but also connecting all the natural urban spaces with the open spaces of the territory.

THE EIXAMPLE MAKEOVER

And a priority intervention area was identified for the central district ‘El Eixample’, a compact and dense urban fabric, with a mesh of orthogonal streets conceived and designed solely for mobility that absorbs much of the mobility of vehicles passing through the city. Cars and asphalt occupy more than 60% of the surface and there is no street furniture to sit or stand on. The application of the Superblock concept in the Eixample involves a global reorganisation of mobility, freeing 1 out of 3 streets from through traffic and turning them into new green axes. The key issue is that on these green axes cars can circulate but are obliged to turn at every junction, which turns them into access streets, but not through streets, drastically reducing the number of vehicles circulating. In this way, a new network of 21 green axes and 21 squares can be created, acting as an environmental and social infrastructure, improving comfort and health conditions, increasing the presence of greenery and living spaces in a systemic and balanced way throughout the area. In addition, action is also being taken on the basic mobility routes, reducing traffic lanes to incorporate bus lanes and cycle lanes.

URBAN DESIGN IN ACTION: 2020-2023 INTERVENTIONS

During the period 2020-2023 a first phase of green axes was developed and executed, which included sections of 4 streets: Consell de Cent, Rocafort, Borrell and Girona, as well as 4 squares at their intersections and at the junction of Enric Granados street, at the same time as new cycle lanes were implemented on the main mobility routes.

In the new green axes, people are the main protagonists of the new street model. A single platform of universal accessibility is configured, in which vehicles are guest agents and pedestrians always have priority, walking by the middle, enabling their free movement, transversal relations between facades and the appearance of places to stay with urban furniture. The street is treated as a three-dimensional environmental infrastructure that adapts to the impacts of climate change, improving health conditions, comfort, emotional well-being and biodiversity. The subsoil is regenerated, with a richer and more draining base. The permeable surface is increased, Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDs) are incorporated and new vegetation and trees are planted. The streets have gone from being a space only for mobility to a space for being, a space on a human scale.

The 4 new green axes and the 4 squares, since the day they opened up, have become very popular and highly valued by the residents. Benches and tables are places for many people to stay and meet. The squares have provided a new public space that is unprecedented and necessary in the Eixample and the green axes allow something that was impossible before, which is to walk from the centre of the street.

This first phase has involved the transformation of a total surface area of 110,000 m2, with 4.65 km of green axes and 8,000 m2 of squares. The pedestrian space has been increased by 58,000 m2, the permeable surface has increased from 1% to 15%, the urban green space has been increased by 11,000 m2, and 400 new trees of various species have been planted. The increase in shade and replacement of asphalt has reduced the surface temperature by 5oC in summer. The number of cars on the green axes and in the Eixample as a whole has been reduced by 17%.

The new green axes in Barcelona show that it is possible to transform streets into new spaces for collective life, for proximity, healthier and adapted to the new climatic conditions. And the virtue of the Superblocks strategy is that it can be perfectly adaptable to any urban fabric.