ANNUAL CONGRESS 2025

Spatial and social justice “on the street” and “beyond the streets”: reflections on Barcelona’s superblocks

Not scheduled

20m

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Oral Track 03 | MOBILITY

Speaker

Elisabetta Vitale Brovarone

Description

In the context of multiple and overlapping crises at a global level (e.g., ecological and climate change, socioeconomic crises, pandemics, wars), urban space has emerged as a place for experimentation with processes of transformation of city models, of how to live in and move through the city. Many cities have undertaken mobility-related experiments to promote a transition that, by limiting the use of cars in certain areas or neighborhoods, serve to free up and recover public spaces, allocating them to more diversified uses (walking, cycling, etc.) and activities (crossing, passing through, but also meeting and socializing).
Since 2016, Barcelona has also embarked on this path and the municipal government, through the super blocks model (superilles in Catalan, supermanzanas in Spanish), has developed and gradually expanded an experiment of tactical urbanism aimed at reducing traffic in certain neighborhoods of the city by creating zones with preferential pedestrian use. The explicit aim of the project is to recover public space and improve the air quality and health of the population. The super-blocks experiment, which started in the Poble Nou neighborhood and over the years has evolved and been extended to other areas of the city, has triggered opposing reactions and has been the subject of political and recently even legal struggles.
Starting as a theoretical premise from the debates and literatures on spatial justice the right to the city and the concepts of just streets, and considering the super blocks model as an experiment, also political, of constructing a model of mobility and of experiencing public space in a different way, this paper aims to investigate two issues:
First, it analyses the impact “on the street”, of the different versions and practical developments of the superblock model in terms of distributive justice intended as redesigning street spaces to serve all users – walkers, cyclists, public transport, and drivers.
Second, looking “beyond the streets”, it considers the possible side effects of the superblock model with particular attention on housing precarization and gentrification of the areas involved, and on the city as a whole. Through this twofold analysis we suggest that the experiments to build/develop more “just streets” – as the superblocks in Barcelona – should not consider “just the streets” and look beyond the streets to prevent the risks of rising housing costs – and therefore housing precarity – and gentrification.