The best European public space is a canal

Europe's urban problems are similar.

They need to develop resistance to climate change and make cities more livable.

How to achieve it?

Adapting (planting trees that do not die) and reacting (reducing the presence of cars and betting on public space).

That is why the European Prize for Urban Public Space is, in reality, an observatory of the ills —almost all of them common— that afflict European cities.

And, also, applause for the best solutions that engineers, landscapers, politicians, citizen initiatives and architects manage to find to try to alleviate these ills.

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Since the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) convened it for the first time in the year 2000, we have seen how the presence of pedestrians drove cars out of urban centers and how social initiatives coexisted with monumental buildings at the time of clean up and redraw the cities.

Linear park along the canal.Photo/OKRA landschapsarchitecten

In Utrecht (Netherlands), a hybrid recovery has won the eleventh edition of the award.

It is a transversal project, an intervention that combines knowledge to attend to several needs at the same time.

Thus, a motorway —which had been in operation for 50 years— has been converted into a reorganized canal, restored as a public space and also as a means of transportation.

The canal is a sports facility and also an urban park —thanks to the linear garden that runs along its banks.

The recovery of the Catharijnesingel canal outlines the European commitment to renaturalize cities in response to climate change and as a reaction to civic deficiencies in the midst of the post-pandemic era.

The project restores a 1.1 kilometer stretch of the city, adds 40,000 cubic meters of water to the canal and adds to a total length of almost six kilometers that rebuilds an ecosystem.

In his priorities, he recalls other interventions that relate rivers, or canals, and nature with urban mobility and recreation, such as: Madrid Río, the recovery of the banks of the Segre in Lleida, those of the Ebro in Zaragoza or the routes along the Besós in Barcelona. .

It is, like these projects, an open and interpretable space, at the same time a park and also a path, a work of landscape, engineering and architecture that makes the movement and rest of pedestrians coexist and prioritizes it over the presence of cars.

He also defends the care of the vegetation on the construction to try to alleviate the effects of climate change.

Elm, poplar and plane trees were planted along the riverbank.Photo/OKRA landschapsarchitecten

The main decision to recover the Catharijnesingel canal and expand the Zocherpark, which was taken by the OKRA landschapsarchitecten studio, was the reorganization of traffic, the diversion of cars to build pedestrian paths, shaded by elms, plane trees, prunus and poplars and dotted with areas Rest.

The variety of plants and the recovery of water also ensure animal biodiversity: the return of bees and the transformation of a road into a linear park that adds to the already existing Zocherpark garden.

The materials used in the intervention —clinker bricks (the old Rhine bricks) and gravel— are barely visible.

And, nevertheless, they relate this new intervention with the invoice of the historical center of the city.

Wooden piers also serve several functions.

They are the pier for canoeists, the seat for walkers and can become stages.

Mobility, sport and rest coexist in the new 1.1 kilometers of linear park.Stijn Poelstra |

Stijnstijl Fotografie

The international jury, chaired by the landscape designer, forestry engineer and professor at the Federal Polytechnic School of Zurich, Teresa Galí-Izard, considers that the reconstruction of the canal, together with the recovery of the linear park that runs along its banks, is a model intervention for the survival of cities in the new climatic era because it recovers an ecosystem and makes explicit the European will to renaturalise cities.

In Utrecht, the canal increases the city's ability to cope with extreme heat and also drains and evacuates storm water.

Water reclamation and vegetation help sequester carbon and reduce pollution.

Playful ambition and the habitat for living beings coexist in the same space.

Humanity, sustainability and a response to the climate come together in this channel that seeks to regenerate life in cities, prevent floods, shade summers, bring fresh air, and reduce the speed of travel.