The Barcelona City Council is firmly committed to transforming the Eixample, following the success of the Sant Antoni superblock. The idea is to continue applying tactical urbanism in the streets to turn them into green axes with squares.
The projection of the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, is that in 10 years this urban planning model will be implemented in the most populated district of Barcelona. All with the aim of converting the 21 streets between Plaça Espanya and Plaça de les Glòries into green axes complemented by the construction of 21 octagonal squares.
The Great superblock in the Eixample district
If you want to imagine in advance what the Eixample will be like in the coming years, you can go for a walk around Sant Antoni market. An environment where the priority is the pedestrian and where you can see people tasting coffee, beer or playing board games.
Everything will become an environment formerly occupied by cars. The cars that will be allowed to circulate in the zone will have to do so at no more than 10 km/h (6 mph).
The large superblock is considered a transformative project for the city. The Mayor’s Office took as a reference for its development the “Cerdà plan” that modernized the City of Barcelona at the end of the 19th century. Thanks to this background, it was possible to recover the spirit of urban transformation that was key to changing the Eixample for the 21st century.
It is expected that in ten years one of every three streets in the district (the most polluted in the city) will become a green area and that the residents of the area and all the inhabitants of the city will have a square of a similar size to those of Gràcia.
Each square will mean that cars will have to turn as they will not be able to continue in a straight line, as happens in the superblocks of Sant Antoni and 22@. This would limit traffic to motorcycles, cars and delivery vans that have to work in the area.
Eixample Project
The superblock proposal is conditional on improvements related to public transport and mobility, steps that the City Council has been taking with the Generalitat and the Government.
If effective action is achieved, public transport could be reduced by some 350,000 vehicles crossing the Eixample every day. In fact, in the case of the extension of the Trambesòs from Glòries to Passeig Sant Joan, it could be thought that about 40,000 fewer vehicles would circulate in this area of the city.
For the time being, the municipal government will start the Eixample readaptation project on four streets (Consell de Cent, Rocafort, Girona and Comte Borrell), betting on tactical urbanism in the midst of the de-escalation of the first wave of pandemic. Each octagonal plaza will be about 2,000 square meters.
