I have lived in Barcelona for about four years, and have followed Superblock development closely. Last Friday, I visited the site in the St. Antoni area. It was awesome to see the former intersection filled with people. They were seated, standing, walking, talking, having a drink, playing. It is a stunning transformation and an awesome improvement in the city. It makes me want to move to that neighborhood - Superblocks won't reach my area for a couple of years.
I live right beside the St Antoni market and I'm loving it. Not that I use it that much myself, but others do and they are already doing it. Yesterday I walked around and it was filled with people enjoying it, and some streets just opened a few days ago. Although it looks very strange, different, kind of "industrial-like" (for the lack of better description) with all the yellow triangles, I'm liking it very much :)
Let's hope it works out, there are many people rallying against this initiative (Dey Turk Er Ckers!!1) I think it will prove to be for the best (of course this is my opinion).
Are there any US cities doing experiments similar to this? All I hear in the news are NY's subway problems and crumbling infrastructure across the nation while politicians do nothing. A whole lot of innovation in the public sector seems to be happening in Europe and Asia.
Superblocks again! Popular idea in 1930s-1950s public housing. Peter Cooper Village in NYC is laid out that way.[1] The units near the roads are more desirable and higher priced.
Superblocks in this iteration are different, because while the interior streets have car restrictions they follow the pattern of the existing street grids. This means that pedestrians and cyclists can continue using the interior paths to pass through the neighborhood as they did before, and their commutes are no longer via the superblock.
Corbusier-inspired superblocks have meandering, parklike paths, both to play up the similarity to a park and discourage through pedestrian or cyclist traffic. This was supposed to increase safety by limiting the amount of unknown strangers passing through, but in many cases decreased it as the available "eyes on the street" dropped dramatically and in some cases totally disappeared. Stuyvesant Town has been spared mostly because of its location and upmarket residents, but the public housing projects have fared less well.
There aren't a whole lot of businesses or transit stops inside Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village [1]. Barcelona, in contrast, is apparently planning to encourage multi-use development.
[1] I considered moving there, but much of it is actually not convenient to the subway or Citibike. And my prospective roommate wanted to be closer to the East Village. So, anecdotally, lack of transit and businesses is what makes the interior less desirable, not lack of car access.
I note the opening says: "(Municipal elections today, May 26, will provide a crucial test for the plan.)"
Does anybody with familiarity with the area have a sense of how that test panned out? I can look up the basic results but wouldn't be familiar with how parties stood on the plan, and accordingly if people who backed it were successful or otherwise.
So so. Although the election result is worse than the previous elections for the mayor Ada Colau, the political deal game finally has given her the office again (in Spanish):
Ada Colau, which was the major behind the Superblocks proposal, was elected once again, although with some turmoil (basically she's from a left-wing party and got elected thanks to the votes of the previously France Prime Minister Manuel Valls who was running with a right-wing party). More info https://www.thelocal.es/20190616/barcelona-mayor-reelected-a...
after the elections, the mayor will continue being Ada Colau, despite ending in second place this time. the whole situation is much more complicated than that, but there's a clear majority by left-wing parties, so the plan will most likely continue
The main difference I see is that most of Europe isn't built on grids. It strikes me they cause as many problems as they solve. Most road networks are essentially hierarchical - you have (more or less) arteries, collectors/feeders, and local roads. Local roads should be for local access, and collectors/feeders consolidate access between arteries and local roads.
In the grid, it feels like there is no local road - just arteries (eg Barcelona's diagonals) and .. roads. You can try to downgrade a feeder into a local road using "traffic calming" measures; speed bumps, speed limits, one way systems - but the moment there's any congestion on the intended feeders, people will try to route around it and bring the congestion to the unintended feeders.
The whole "superblock" concept appears simply to reintroduce local roads into a system that was built without them - which isn't actually an issue typical of most European cities.
It's a series of 5 articles, each article having at least ten pictures. Not sure if you missed those, or you're asking for even more pictures. Could probably dig out some from the city government if it's the latter.
[+] [-] pauldavis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pedrogpimenta|6 years ago|reply
Let's hope it works out, there are many people rallying against this initiative (Dey Turk Er Ckers!!1) I think it will prove to be for the best (of course this is my opinion).
[+] [-] justaguyhere|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] personlurking|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IlegCowcat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%93Peter_...
[+] [-] bobthepanda|6 years ago|reply
Corbusier-inspired superblocks have meandering, parklike paths, both to play up the similarity to a park and discourage through pedestrian or cyclist traffic. This was supposed to increase safety by limiting the amount of unknown strangers passing through, but in many cases decreased it as the available "eyes on the street" dropped dramatically and in some cases totally disappeared. Stuyvesant Town has been spared mostly because of its location and upmarket residents, but the public housing projects have fared less well.
[+] [-] jdm2212|6 years ago|reply
[1] I considered moving there, but much of it is actually not convenient to the subway or Citibike. And my prospective roommate wanted to be closer to the East Village. So, anecdotally, lack of transit and businesses is what makes the interior less desirable, not lack of car access.
[+] [-] noelrock|6 years ago|reply
Does anybody with familiarity with the area have a sense of how that test panned out? I can look up the basic results but wouldn't be familiar with how parties stood on the plan, and accordingly if people who backed it were successful or otherwise.
[+] [-] diggan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tecleandor|6 years ago|reply
https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/06/18/catalunya/1560843562_1155...
She'll have a worse position but probably they'll get to move some of the plans.
[+] [-] darkwater|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slx26|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toper-centage|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soneil|6 years ago|reply
In the grid, it feels like there is no local road - just arteries (eg Barcelona's diagonals) and .. roads. You can try to downgrade a feeder into a local road using "traffic calming" measures; speed bumps, speed limits, one way systems - but the moment there's any congestion on the intended feeders, people will try to route around it and bring the congestion to the unintended feeders.
The whole "superblock" concept appears simply to reintroduce local roads into a system that was built without them - which isn't actually an issue typical of most European cities.
[+] [-] diggan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toper-centage|6 years ago|reply