The Barcelona City Council wants to extend the Sant Antoni super-block to the entire Eixample and make "a leap of scale" in the implementation of super-blocks, with the aim of consolidating a new city model that is more sustainable, healthy, and for people. "The entire city has to be a super-block," defended the Deputy Mayor for Ecology, Urbanism, and Mobility, Janet Sanz, in the presentation of the initiative. "It is a proposal for great urban transformation, but also for the future," she emphasized and recalled that it is a model that is not only being promoted in Barcelona but has been replicated in other cities around the world and has been applauded by different experts, who have surrendered to the Barcelona super-blocks. The project will have a total budget of almost 40 million euros, and the council does not rule out seeking support from European funds, although the forecast is to cover it with the municipal budget.
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The idea behind this new Barcelona recovers one of its fundamental pillars: the Cerdà Plan. Designed to modernize the city in the late 19th century and make it healthier and more livable, the Cerdà framework is the starting point for the transformation that Ada Colau's government wants to develop, extracting its original concepts and adapting them to the 21st century. For example, if in recent decades the interiors of the Eixample blocks were meant to serve as green spaces and a meeting point for neighbors, now streets like Consell de Cent, Rocafort, Comte Borrell, and Girona will fulfill this purpose by becoming green axes. And the famous chamfers of the neighborhood will become squares, also green and imitating those in Gracia. The first ones will be found at the intersections of Consell de Cent-Rocafort, Consell de Cent-Borrell, Consell de Cent-Enric Granados, and Consell de Cent-Girona.
According to Sanz, if Cerdà transformed the Eixample to reduce the excessive concentration of housing, now it's time to do the same with cars. The deputy mayor explained that Barcelona concentrates 6,000 cars per square kilometer, exceeding the ratios of other European cities such as Madrid, Paris, and London, which are also larger. She also warned that about 350,000 cars cross the city center daily through the Eixample. And the City Council wants to reduce that figure to improve the health of its citizens.
The transformation proposed by the consistory aims to respond to a moment "of maximum emergency" like the current one, where different crises converge, such as the health, economic, and climate crises, said the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau. "We are asked to have a vision for the future and planning," she remarked. To do this, Colau has assured that it is not only necessary to add more superblocks but that policies like this must be accompanied by others, such as the Low Emission Zone (ZBE), the reinforcement of public transport, and electric cars. For the deputy mayor of Agenda 2030, Digital Transition, Sports, and Territorial and Metropolitan Coordination of Barcelona, Laia Bonet, the impulse of superblocks must also serve to transition towards a new economic model in the city, more sustainable and efficient, where neighborhoods become the protagonists and more life is lived in them.
The Barcelona City Council's roadmap for the coming years is to transform 21 of the 61 streets in the Eixample into green axes and create 21 new squares at the intersections, without specifying, however, when this scenario would be reached. With this plan, more than 30 kilometers will be pacified ---three times the Diagonal Avenue---; 3.9 hectares of squares; an increase of 33.4 hectares of pedestrian space ---a Ciutadella Park---, and 6.6 hectares of urban green space ---six Eixample blocks---. All this will mean that one out of every three streets in the Eixample will be a green axis and its residents will have one of these new lanes or squares less than 200 meters away.
Works will begin in 2022
The transformation of the Eixample has begun to materialize with the immediate launch of two public tenders, which will allow setting the foundations of this new city model and defining what the urban changes will be like. One tender will be for the conversion of the first four streets into green axes and to establish what the 21st-century street model will be, based on the urgent actions that have been carried out during the pandemic and have been visualized with tactical urban planning elements. With a budget of 32.8 million, this new road pattern is what is aspired to be progressively implemented in the rest of the city. The other tender foresees the design of the first four squares, projecting them as central elements of the future city, and five million euros will be allocated.
The municipal government is working with the forecast of executing the works for the first four green axes and squares in this mandate, starting them from 2022. To comply with this calendar, the two tenders were published this Tuesday and will be resolved in March 2021. In April, the participatory process will begin, which will last three months and aims to involve the city's economic fabric, residents, and entities. "We cannot do it alone, we have to do it with everyone," Sanz emphasized. Once the participatory process ends, the projects will be drafted starting in May of next year.