Excess traffic, unmitigated pollution, a lack of green space: These problems aren’t unique to Barcelona. But the city’s answer is.
Superblocks—40-acre, tic-tac-toe sections of the street grid that the city has transformed into pedestrian-first environments—have shot the Catalonian capital to the cutting edge of urban design since Mayor Ada Colau took office in 2015. Drawing inspiration from the city’s historic plan, Colau centered her transportation policy platform around wide-scale pedestrianization of the city, with the goal of reducing private car and moped use by 21 percent.
A new short documentary from Streetfilms provides an intimate glimpse into the Poblenou superblock, the first of this new wave of street interventions, which opened in 2016. Just a few years ago, multiple lanes pushed vehicles down every block in this once-industrial neighborhood, now home to working-class families and artists. Now a single narrow lane without any grade separations winds cars slowly around the perimeter of the special three-block-by-three-block chunk of streetscape. The rest of the space is cleared for pedestrians, cyclists, and kids to move among bike lanes, open paths, trees, sculptures, street furniture, and playground equipment.
[For more on this story by LAURA BLISS, go to https://www.citylab.com/transp...t-superblock/566864/]
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