Implementing the Supermanzana approach in Barcelona. Critical issues at local and urban level

ABSTRACT

To improve neighbourhood liveability and urban sustainability, Barcelona is seeking to re-organize its urban structure into superblocks, designed to discourage cut-through traffic and promote multiple uses of street space. Despite its potential, this approach is not without its limits, that should be properly taken into account. The implementation of the Supermanzana model in the Poblenou neighbourhood is explored in this paper to analyse its potentialities and constraints. Temporal synchronization between the urban level and the neighbourhood level turns out to be particularly important to reduce conflicts and criticalities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The ‘neighbourhood unit’ expression is often referred specifically to the model developed by Clarence Perry in 1929. In this paper, this term will be used to express a pervasive and enduring ‘planning idea’, that has been implemented and inflected in a wide range of forms and versions for over a century (Brody 2016).

2. In a comparative study on forms and dimensions of urban blocks, Siksna (1998, 278) states that ‘a circulation mesh ranging from 80 m to 110 m can be regarded as an optimal provision’.

3. This plan has not yet been formally adopted by Spanish legislation, but it has already been tested to apply the SM strategy in some Spanish cities. It was adopted for the first time in Barcelona, in 2006 in the District of Gracia and more recently in the District of Sant Martí (as reported in next section). Moreover, UEAB collaborated with other municipalities, such as A Coruña, Bilbao, Ferrol, Figueres, Lugo and Vitoria-Gasteiz, to export the SM model and its Mobility and public space plan also outside Barcelona.

4. Also in Vitoria-Gasteiz (the capital city of the Basque Country in Northern Spain) UEAB has widely tested the SM model. In 2008 a Sustainable mobility and public space plan was adopted; it identified 68 SMs all over the city; 17 of them have been implemented till now. In this article, Barcelona was preferred as a case study instead of Vitoria-Gasteiz for two reasons. First, it is a metropolis; this stresses the implementation of the SM model on the whole urban area to a more challenging level than in the case of Vitoria-Gasteiz (whose population is one fourth than in Barcelona). Second, Barcelona is characterized by a particular regular grid network (differently from the radial network in Vitoria-Gasteiz) that can be a critical issue for the SM model, as it will be shown in the next pages.

5. The Pla de Mobilitat Urbana 2013–2018 is coming to an end: currently, just over the half of its 64 measures has been executed. The renovation of the new bus network was completed in November 2018, but at the moment it hasn’t reached the expected results in terms of average speed and frequencies. In 2016 pedestrian and bicycle mobility have increased their modal share compared to 2011 (respectively, from 31.9% to 32.2%, and from 1.5% to 2.1%), but that of the car has decreased very slightly (from 26.7% to 26.1%, and the target of 21.1% in 2018 seems very far to be reached). In the last months of 2018 the participation process to support the elaboration of the new Pla de Mobilitat Urbana 2019–2024 was launched.

6. In the Barris de Sants i Hofstrafrancs, which is located outside the Cerdà grid, some structural changes were already realized between 2015 and 2017, but they were limited to some urban squares.

7. In Autumn 2018 inside the Poblenou SM space for cars had been reduced by 48%, parking spaces from 575 to 316, car traffic from 2.218 cars/day to 932 cars/day; on the other hand, pedestrian surface had almost been doubled (from 31.536 to 56.665 sq.m.), with 176 new trees.

8. In a recent interview by a Spanish newspaper, a member of the Collectiu Superilla Poblenou confirmed this finding: ‘The “low cost” model did have to be revised upwards. There is also an element of perception. “If people see a space which has been urbanized and landscaped for pedestrian […], they don’t think why not put cars on it; if the carriageway is maintained, even putting flowers pots and paint on it, they see it as wasted for traffic”’ (elPeriódico, 4 October 2018).