CityMakers, The Global Community of Architects Who Learn from Exemplary Cities and Their Makers, is working with Archdaily to publish a series of articles about Barcelona, Medellin, and Rotterdam. The authors are the architects, urban planners, and/or strategists behind the projects that have transformed these three cities and are studied in the "Schools of Cities" and "Documentary Courses" made by CityMakers. On this occasion, Jaume Barnada, coordinator of the award-winning Climate Shelters project in Barcelona schools and speaker at the "Schools of Cities", presents his article "Barcelona, the public place as a synonym for the adaptation of the built city."
Cities are dense, built spaces in which pavements have been efficiently imposed on the natural soil. Cities like Barcelona have almost 75% of the land paved and waterproof. Without a doubt, it is an excess to reverse at a time of climate emergency, where we must reconnect with nature. Oriol Bohigas [1] told us that good urbanization had paved the squares of Mediterranean cities and that no one wanted to live in a mudhole. I'm sure he was right. Also, he taught us that the green and, consequently, the natural soil had to have dimension and especially an urban position. Squares are squares and parks are parks, and each space has a type of project. Today, concepts are too frequently confused when urbanizing public places and consequently, we find projects that blur the model.
A new definition of contemporary public spaces is necessary, both in their form and design. The old cataloging of squares, streets, and parks has become obsolete. Today we often find formless places that make up part of the urban networks that define new uses and ways of living.
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How Barcelona, Medellin, and Rotterdam Have Generated Public Space Where It Seemed ImpossibleWe will hardly have the possibility of building large new parks in consolidated cities again, but we will once again define urban quality by adapting the built city. Janet Sadik-Khan [2] affirms that the transformation of cities will come from the transformation of their streets, not from new technology. She's not wrong, but she doesn't understand the whole of the city and its diversity. In fact, the transformation of cities will come from the transformation of small-scale public places, their proximity to housing, and the creation of urban networks.
Barcelona has been designing and recovering public spaces for years, transforming them into new places of urban proximity with an important democratic character. The so-called “Barcelona model” is a way to renew the city from the public, from the street. It is a successful model that needs continuity and diversity.
The city is experienced from public space, and cities that transform their public space are cities that transform positively.
The urban model of Barcelona has been reinterpreted since the 80s of the last century until today. The starting point has always been to renew the public place and redefine it as a meeting space. From the first urban emergency actions when the center was cleaned up and the periphery was monumentalized, we moved on to a broad system of urban acupuncture widespread throughout the city. Later, a fundamental concept was defined by saying that streets are not roads that, when adapted, is still valid. Indeed, in today's Barcelona, we carry out projects in which the space dedicated to private vehicles is restricted, preference is given to people and the space for the implementation of nature is increased.
Barcelona has good metropolitan green standards. About 18 m2 of green per inhabitant, if we include the forest area of the Collserola mountain, while the urban greenery is about 7.5 m2/inhabitant. The WHO recommends between 7 to 10 m2 per inhabitant. The city's problem lies in an unequal distribution of these standards in its neighborhoods. In the most consolidated and historic areas, the green percentage does not reach 2 m2/inhabitant. It is important not to confuse public space with green areas. These data indicate that an effort must be made to naturalize the city, at a time of climate emergency.
Temperatures in the city have increased on average 1.8ºC compared to pre-industrial times and every summer there are heat waves that exceed the average temperature of 33ºC for more than 3 days. We need shaded spaces and cool places to maintain a good quality of life and for that, tree planting is essential. Barcelona has 1.5 million trees, of which 150,000 are in its streets and 205,000 are in urban parks.
The Barcelona Natura Plan [3] proposes increasing 1 m2 of green per inhabitant by 2030. This is equivalent to urbanizing 1,700,000 m2 of new naturalized public spaces. In a compact city, this objective becomes difficult and therefore the plan establishes 4 categories of green: green of a metropolitan nature, green of connectivity, green of reinforcement for biodiversity nodes, and green of equity. In addition, the plan establishes a great diversity of places that can be naturalized. The key to the city is diversity and taking advantage of urban values. We are in a moment of opportunity to promote an ecological transformation and Barcelona does not want to waste it.
For many years, in Barcelona, the conditions of public spaces have been improved to achieve spaces of urban comfort and for this, Mediterranean squares and streets have been rethought as places to be. Today we continue to do so by current needs and therefore we are changing the conception of the 80s and 90s by projecting friendlier squares and streets, with permeability and more shadows.
We seek to redefine the public place and therefore make it more complex. The city needs public spaces for older people, to play, to be, etc. Diversity is the key, and the new places will no longer be exclusively squares, streets, or parks. We proposed to redefine the city and therefore to work on new places as spaces of urban opportunity.
The green of equity is the one that is in proximity and meets the necessary conditions to be a space of comfort. The idea of a nearby city is a reality in the neighborhoods of today's Barcelona. 50% of the city's people move around on foot in nearby urban environments where they find their place to live. Almost 90% of the population of Barcelona has at least 5 basic facilities around their home, including food, health and education, one public transport stop, and a public space. Immediate projects consolidate this model of success.
This general framework defines a great diversity of projects that adapt to the city's neighborhoods and take advantage of the urban opportunities of consolidated grids while offering new recovered places that recognize the needs of citizens. Many of these projects require temporality and constant review to extend over the territory and improve its conditions. The recovery of block interiors in Eixample is an interesting example to analyze.
Since the 90s, projects have been carried out that recover Ildefons Cerdà's [4] original idea of having green urban spaces of a domestic nature in the form of small gardens that favor a proximity of about 200 meters around them. Today almost 80 have already been projected and 40 more will be projected in the coming years.
The urban development of the city has densified the inner courtyards of the block with buildings or has privatized them. At the end of the last century, we found 3 situations: patios with green and public equipment, patios with private gardens, patios built with industries or parking lots. The work of Barcelona City Council is almost surgical since they detect the situation of each interior block, propose a small urban plan, and project the recovery of the place as a public garden. It is expensive, slow work, but socially very profitable and an important example of the ability to improve the conditions of the city and adapt them to the current situation.
In these cases, we can speak of urban acupuncture and urban naturalization, while delving deeper into the idea of a nearby city. These are diverse public space projects that can be accompanied by public facilities and that generate small urban centralities. This type of action breaks with the idea that it is difficult to regenerate the city, it is always possible if we consider its characteristics and take advantage of its values and heritage. Micro gardens represent an active look towards the future, a unique opportunity that must be taken advantage of and that can be extended to the rest of the city through action programs that favor the public and urban green.
Sources
- ORIOL BOHIGAS. Reconstruction of Barcelona. Edicions 62, Barcelona, 1985.
- JANETTE SADIK-KHAN. Street Fight. Penguin Books, New York, 2017.
- AJUNTAMENT DE BARCELONA. Pla Natura. Barcelona, 2021.
- ILDEFONS CERDÀ is the author of the Project for the Reform and Expansion of Barcelona (Eixample), 1859.
Jaume Barnada (1960), is a Doctor of Architecture from the UPC. He has been a professor of the master's degrees in Urban Planning, Architecture, and Criticism, of the Sustainable Housing Laboratory at the UPC, of the postgraduate course City Management of the UOC, and of the courses The Self-Sufficient City and the Nearby City of the CIDEU. He has been Director of Urban Planning and Housing of the Municipal Urban Planning Institute, Deputy Manager of the Barcelona Housing Consortium, and Advisor to the Department of Urban Planning. He currently works in the Management of the Chief Architect of Barcelona City Council. He has been the coordinator of the Climate Shelters project in Barcelona schools, which has received the international award, 2022, from the International Association of Educating Cities. He is the author of articles and books, such as Twelve Cities and Their Public Spaces. He has published in the magazine Architecture and Urbanism of the Faculty of Architecture of Havana the article Systems of Contemporary Public Spaces… from Classical Mobility to Diffuse Urban Space, in the magazine A10 (# 56) the article Catalan and Streetwise, and recently, the article, A city with shadows in the Architecture and Society yearbook of the UPV.
