The color code with which Barcelona has started taking cars out of the city

It has been three months since

began to move in a different way.

The end of the confinement brought a partial redesign of

that has been consolidated and has planted solid roots, despite the initial resistance of a part of the citizens and the opposition of professional groups.

It was not an open heart operation, but rather an act of non-invasive surgery.

A humble

to clean up the arteries of a city that was beginning to recover from a pandemic.

In mid-June, the city council presented a package of urgent urban planning interventions - the increase in the price of the blue parking area, new bike lanes and specific pacifications or traffic cuts such as Via Laietana, one of the main roads in the city - which, in essence, intended to expand the space available for pedestrians, cyclists, shops and services to the detriment of that occupied by cars (an idea that José María Ezquiaga already proposed for the city of Madrid, although with little success).

And although we must credit a global pandemic, it is the first European Mobility Week - from September 16 to 22 - that cities receive with such a radical transformation of shared urban space, a journey that must be celebrated.

In Barcelona, ​​they described it as a provisional post-

, but it was planned from the beginning as something else, as a medium-term transformation project.

In a few days, in a simple way and for a modest price in terms of urban planning (4,400,000 euros, according to municipal sources), the city equipped itself with new exclusive corridors for bicycles, increased its network of bus lanes, converted part of the roads in temporary extensions of the sidewalks and partially pacified or pedestrianized several sections of streets.

The horizontal signage, in blue imitating the drawing of the classic 'panots' on the sidewalks of Barcelona to indicate the areas reserved for bicycles, and in yellow diagonal lines, for pedestrian areas, is a temporary, quick and cheap solution that is it will be replaced by permanent ideas with a clear objective: to grow in spaces for the pedestrian.

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Edu Bayer

The new use of spaces was marked with ephemeral solutions such as pivots, plastic barriers, concrete blocks and horizontal signage painted on the pavement (areas for pedaling in blue, areas for walking in yellow).

The Catalan capital thus woke up to a new urban landscape, motley and confusing, in the opinion of some, but with less intense, slower and less noisy traffic.

And with an extra space for pedestrians to more easily respect safety distances and for bars and restaurants to expand their terraces.

Months after the intervention, the architect and journalist Juli Capella describes it as "a fantastic initiative, an attempt to humanize the city and give it back to its inhabitants."

A set of actions "conceptually clear and resounding, although with specific execution errors and I think very understandable".

The team from the Barcelona City Council, with Colau in the center, goes through one of the yellow areas, mainly intended for walking.

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Edu Bayer

His main objection is of an aesthetic nature: “I have eyes in my face and I cannot help but realize that the new elements of urban furniture used are not beautiful, they are not harmonious.

But to insist too much on their ugliness seems to me a bit frivolous, especially if we take into account that they are guerrilla urban resources that, moreover, will be withdrawn very soon.

The city council will end up replacing them with permanent solutions that are more practical, better thought out and hopefully much more aesthetic ”.

The important thing, in his opinion, “is that a decisive step has been taken towards a different and much better city model”.

The paint and pivots are provisional, "but the commitment to a more sustainable city and less surrendered to the dictatorship of the car is permanent."

In conversation with ICON DESIGN, Janet Sanz, second deputy mayor and councilor for Urbanism, Ecology and Mobility of the Barcelona City Council describes the actions as "an example of tactical urbanism".

In other words, "an ephemeral response to a series of very specific problems that required rapid intervention and, if possible, cheap."

However, he assures that it is also "an advance towards a strategic objective that this municipal team has been promoting since we arrived at the town hall."

Ada Colau at the presentation of the postcovid mobility measures package.

While for the defenders of the private vehicle the intervention restricts the user's freedom of choice between the different ways of mobility, for some experts, the restrictions on the car are even lukewarm.

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Edu Bayer

It is not a “crusade” against the car, explains the deputy mayor, “but it is an attempt to distribute urban space in a more logical, healthier and fairer way: until now, we allocated 60% of private cars to the surface of the city ”.

In her opinion, "that percentage must be drastically reduced."

Above all, “in neighborhoods such as Eixample, which is the most congested and the most prone to suffer the adverse consequences of climate change.

That is why we have focused on him part of these transformative actions that are a dress rehearsal of our medium and long-term mobility plan ”.

Capella agrees with Sanz that the time has come to stand up in a much more resolute way to “the car culture”, to that trend in Barcelona –extendable to other cities–, and “sometimes caricatured, but very real, to make use of of the private vehicle even to go buy bread ”.

The architect considers that “it has been necessary to resort to the so-called tactical urbanism to respond to the deterioration and failure of conventional urbanism”.

In his opinion, until very recently, “Barcelona did not have a real mobility plan, but only a road traffic plan.

The aim was to satisfy the needs of motorists, not the mobility of pedestrians, people in wheelchairs, bicycles, scooters, buses and trams ”.

What if I pay the ticket for the hour to be without a car for a while?

Capella tells an anecdote that seems very significant: “A few months ago, in a frankly fun initiative, a small group of citizens sat at a table and set up a game of cards in one of the squares of a blue parking area, paying , yes, the corresponding rate.

They were evicted in a couple of minutes, because this is not a paid municipal space, but an exclusive space for cars, one of the many privileges that the city grants them and that until now were hardly discussed ”.

For the architect, “putting obstacles in the car is now equivalent to giving the citizen facilities.

We cannot continue to subordinate our model of the city to a noisy and invasive apparatus that goes around monopolizing public space and burning oil ”.

Nor is it a question of banishing it, but rather of "giving it the value it has, as an appropriate option for long, fast and safe journeys, not short and continuous journeys through the heart of urban centers".

Edu Bayer

Esteve Almirall, coordinator of the urban innovation center at the Barcelona School of Business Administration and Management (ESADE), does not share Capella's enthusiasm for the municipal plan.

It seems to him an example of "reluctant and rather cowardly urbanism, which may go in the right direction, but it will not have a positive impact on the lives of citizens and, furthermore, it is not being explained well."

Almirall sees it as “a very lukewarm step and a missed opportunity”, perhaps attributable to “how fragile the majority of Ada Colau is in the Barcelona town hall and the differences in urban sensitivity between his party and his allies in the PSC”.

The academic believes that the city council "has wanted to follow the model of Janette Sadik-Khan", the New York councilor who, between 2007 and 2013, applied the concept of tactical urbanism to the center of Manhattan, partially decongesting environments as busy as Times Square .

Almirall describes tactical urbanism as "small-scale actions at very specific points that serve as controlled intervention experiments that allow you to draw conclusions."

For example, "what happens if you change the direction of traffic for a few days on a street as dense as Broadway or if you install a temporary bicycle lane on a large artery like Park Avenue."

Following his stint on New York City Hall, Sadik-Khan wrote a highly influential essay,

("The street fight: manual for an urban revolution").

It is clear to Almirall that "Janet Sanz and her team have read it and take it very seriously", hence their "willingness to experiment with the city, patching up and trying very short-term tentative solutions", when, according to Almirall , "It is no longer time for experiments."

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Less New York and more Paris

For the expert, "Barcelona should forget about New York, which is a very distant and very specific model, and pay more attention to what cities in our environment such as Amsterdam, Munich, Copenhagen or, above all, Paris are doing."

Almirall is committed to an ambitious conventional urbanism that tackles, once and for all, transformative plans of great depth such as “a comprehensive pedestrianization of the Gràcia neighborhood, the closure of all the Ramblas to traffic or the transformation into micro-forests of some strategic environments from the city, such as the one in Plaza Catalunya ”.

Bike path in the Brooklyn neighborhood, opened under the direction of Janette Sadik-Khan, who, according to the opinion of the expert in urban innovation from the School of Business Administration and Management (ESADE) Esteve Almirall.

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For this reason, he invites the Barcelona City Council to follow the example of Carlos Moreno, advisor to the Paris city council and the main promoter of the 15-minute city project presented in the last municipal elections by Mayor Anne Hidalgo: "The rendered images of a Eiffel Tower surrounded by trees excited many Parisians, because they saw in it the promise of a better city, a feasible urban utopia ”.

According to Almirall, the Barcelona city council “should strive to propose an ideal city model and take decisive steps towards it, instead of wasting time with routine and confusing interventions that neither solve underlying problems nor excite citizens”.

"It is true that it could go much further", Juli Capella acknowledges, "but that argument does not seem valid to me to disqualify specific actions that may be lukewarm, but they go in the only reasonable direction".

The architect praises "the firmness and coherence of Janet Sanz's team", which has continued with its initiatives "despite the belligerent rejection of a part of the citizenry that, responding to certain political and media interests, is enlisting in the resistance to change".

Even highly praised initiatives outside the city such as the famous "super-islands" have encountered internal resistance of this type.

The #VilleDuQuartDHeure, c'est quoi?

C'est la ville des proximités où l'on trouve tout ce dont on a besoin à moins of 15 minutes of chez soi.

This is the condition of the ecological transformation of the town, tout en améliorant la vie quotidienne des Parisiens.

⤵️ # Hidalgo2020 pic.twitter.com/lcQbPAjdxj

- Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) January 21, 2020

For Capella, “the easy thing and, at the same time, the deeply irresponsible thing, would be to do nothing, to resign ourselves to the fact that we continue to be a city surrendered to the car, with one of the worst air quality and the greatest deficit of green areas in the European Union ”.

The ideal, in his opinion, would be that the steps forward could be taken with a fluid dialogue with the public that seeks to generate consensus, “but we cannot get entangled in an eternal and paralyzing debate, also promoted, in a somewhat cynical way, by the They don't want Barcelona to change because they, in particular, are already doing well to continue as it is.

Standing still in full weather alert, with the structural problems that the city is dragging on, would be equivalent to "collective suicide."

For this reason, Capella understands and supports that the city council take advantage of exceptional circumstances such as the new post-covid normality to "advance its agenda for change, even if that sometimes implies resorting to fait accompli."

There is no going back, just a way back

Janet Sanz assumes, as she tells us, the need to "try to reach a consensus and, especially, to explain in the best possible way" the urban planning measures promoted by her team.

However, she insists that the actions carried out last June "were essential, they were urgent and are still insufficient, because many others must be adopted."

The city council could not allow that, after the end of the confinement, "the profoundly unhealthy levels of contamination that the city registered before the covid-19 would immediately recover".

It was necessary to act "resolutely and effectively", and it was done by resorting to "provisional solutions that now, in the second phase we have entered, must be consolidated."

Sanz wants to make it clear that the plan to facilitate citizen mobility and the increasingly diverse use of public spaces to the detriment of the car is "structural" and, therefore, not reversible: "This city council is not going to take steps back."

On the other hand, it will endeavor to correct execution problems by resorting to “a public contest of ideas to consolidate these changes in an optimal way”.

The person in charge of Urbanism accepts that the signage must be "clearer and more intuitive" and that pivots, barriers and concrete blocks must be replaced by permanent elements "more functional, better designed and, why not, more attractive".

In this contest of ideas, we want to prioritize "the renunciation of materials such as cement, plastic or concrete in favor of more sustainable alternatives, as well as the use of more permeable pavement".

But the essential thing is that the pedestrianized sections and the lanes rescued from automobile traffic “will continue to serve to facilitate public and non-polluting mobility” and also, according to specific circumstances, “for recreational and social interaction uses, as well as to alleviate the deficit of Parkland".

Tactical urbanism, as Sanz understands it, is "a tool" that is used in specific circumstances, "when it is necessary to obtain significant results in the very short term."

An ambitious urban mobility plan "takes a minimum of 18 months to implement, while our contingency plan was ready in two weeks and cost very little money by comparison."

The first step is to plant a concrete block and paint a stripe on the ground.

Then comes the time to consolidate the idea of ​​the city implicit in these concrete actions.

"Some of the most ambitious urban transformation projects began as tactical urban planning actions," concludes Sanz.

Even the superislas of Barcelona in the Poblenou neighborhood or the Sant Antoni market, were at first "a sign recently painted on the pavement that prohibited the passage of cars and today they are an eloquent example of the city in which we believe and are building" .