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Barcelona-style “superblocks” could make cities greener and less car-centric
- yrgulation 4y agoYeah, except you know, barcelona’s traffic is horrible.
- RobertoG 4y agoNot worse that before and, anyway, who cares? This is about making people lives better not improving car traffic. Two goals that, in my opinion, are in opposition.
- yrgulation 4y agoPoint is they havent made people’s lives easier since so many still need to drive cars. Barcelona is anything but a good example of how things should be.
- danuker 4y agoCitation needed, for all three of your claims.
- yrgulation 4y agoI am citing myself as i’ve been there for a while and its absolutely horrible.
- danuker 4y agoGoogle public transport directions show me it's 2x as slower than cars, but 4x faster than walking from the airport to Sargada Familia. In my city in Romania, public transport is about the same speed as walking. So I'd say Barcelona has great public transport, based on this limited analysis. Hence, citations neede. What exactly was bad? Did you only try driving?
- yrgulation 4y agoI mean compared to romania, particularly to poorly managed cities such as cluj napoca indeed barceona’s public transport is a blessing. But unfortunately locals dont commute to sagrada familia on a daily basis. Commuting to and from el prat or other office areas is a nightmare, as is reaching to smaller businesses around town. Pulling out stats without actually having been there is misleading as you risk thinking everyone is a tourist taking trains to attractions on the regular, which is what most public transport was designed for - its basically their economy so naturally it will be biased towards that.
- danuker 4y agoFair point. From El Prat to where, do you think would be a fair analysis?
- RobertoG 4y agoEl Prat is not Barcelona, and, still, you have train, metro, public and private bus as an option to arrive from downtown. The idea that public transport has been designed for tourists is preposterous. The network of public transport extend far away from the touristic places. Most tourist, and most expats in my experience (I'm thinking in those that don't bother to learn any local language), stay in three or four neighborhoods and think that that's the city and get their impressions from those few areas. That's the reason you always hear the same histories: pickpockets (stealing from tourists), dirty (drunk tourist peeing in the streets), etc
- midoridensha 4y ago>Google public transport directions show me it's 2x as slower than cars, but 4x faster than walking from the airport to Sargada Familia. ... So I'd say Barcelona has great public transport, based on this limited analysis. That doesn't sound all that great to me. Here in Tokyo, driving is generally not significantly faster than public transit, though of course it can vary a lot depending on your two endpoints. And of course, if you add in time to find parking, that usually makes driving very unattractive (though this doesn't affect taxis of course, so those can be attractive for some routes if you have tons of money you want to waste because they're not cheap).
- RobertoG 4y agoThe point is totally wrong. Most people that live on those areas are pretty happy with the changes, and people that is just passing around those areas are pretty happy too. By the way, you don't need a car if you live and work in Barcelona. In fact, most people that own a car don't use it if they are moving inside the city.
- yrgulation 4y agoIssue tho is that barcelona has plenty of satellite towns and villages, so your comment proves my point. What i want is an actual solution that takes people out of their cars in a meaningful way, not just hippies that have no other choice due to poverty. Proper public transport is in everyone’s interest.
- RobertoG 4y agoI fail to see how my comment proves your point and I fail to see how this comment improves your previous argument.
- cammikebrown 4y agoWhy would you ever drive in such a city? The public transit is fantastic.
- polskibus 4y agoActually the metro is horrible in the summer, as if there was no ventilation.
- betaby 4y agoWhich line exactly? Visited Barcelona in august - don't remember ventilation issues.
- stoplying1 4y agoYeah, I was there in the height of the heatwave 3 years ago. Walking and transit was fine.
- ErneX 4y agoOld lines mostly, like the 1 (red)
- stevenwoo 4y agoSome of the lines are extremely uncomfortable in summer afternoon (was there July 2019 and there was a heat wave for a week with temps of over 100 F), but that was record setting at the time and I was only a tourist.
- polskibus 4y agoI used mostly red this year, sometimes the green one too. Much worse than Valencia for example.
- weatherlight 4y agoThe Barcelona Metro is fine. I used it all summer with no issue, trains come ever 4 minutes and the each car is ventilated and air-conditioned
- 4y ago
- Daishiman 4y agoThe point isn’t to make it easier for traffic.
- xwkd 4y agoMy assumption is that if you are ideologically opposed to private vehicular transportation, then you see this as a good incentive not to own a car. I think things like this are a funny marriage of utopian and tyrannical daydreams.
- RobertoG 4y agoThe idea that you can drive your car to my street, generating noise and contamination and park it there using space, where the kids could be playing, just because you can't be bothered to take a bus is kind of tyrannical too, in my opinion. And it has nothing of utopian.
- lotsoweiners 4y agoPark in front of my house all you want. I have a big backyard my kids can play in and wouldn't ever want them playing out front unsupervised regardless cars or not.
- stoplying1 4y agoMan, I wonder what its like to post this unironically, and not realize what a complete knob you are. You sure did seem to make it though your kids growing up in an isolated sandbox environment. Really evokes some stupid philosophical thoughts I have about "reproducability", free will, and the human experience. But you clearly have it thought through. Lucky kids.
- stoplying1 4y ago"we want to prioritize walking over huge single occupancy vehicles that kill the environment and instead invest in public infra" is tyrannical? Oh man, I don't even know where to begin. I'm sorry, if I'm not misunderstanding it's just hilarious.
- advisedwang 4y agoHaving a bad experience when you are in a car is an natural result of mass-transit/walking oriented cities. By focusing on non-car transport, you are going to end up sacrificing things that are good for car tansport. In fact logically car must be the worse experience if we're expecting folks to make other choices.
- ars 4y agoAnd yet, somehow not a single city has managed to make public transport better than a car. The only thing they've managed is to make car transport worse, and then public transport seems better by comparison. Why are we devoting so much energy to making people unhappy?
- wollsmoth 4y agoIn NYC a car is definitely more trouble than it's worth for a lot of us. I think the same is probably true in cities with a well functioning train system.
- ars 4y agoThe number of car owners in NYC tells me that this isn't true. If even in NYC people still want a car, even with all the trouble, what does that tell you about public transport? And I'm speaking from experience here - I have a ton of friends in NYC who all started without a car "who needs it", and over time every single one bought a car because it's simply too hard without it. NYC is simply too dense, people need space, there's no reason to jam them all in small homes with little space. Although I suppose some people like that.
- wollsmoth 4y agoI'm also speaking from experience. Anecdotally I know a couple people with cars and both are kinda deep in Queens. In a pinch I can rent, but 95% of the time the subway works. In some cases a cab/uber is a time saver or helps move something heavy. Parking is expensive, or you're spending a lot of time looking for a spot. Time is money. What exactly is "too hard" without a car in NYC? Check out this sweet map: https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars
- stoplying1 4y ago
- yrgulation 4y agoAssuming that i am in favour of cars in cities is plain wrong. Barcelona still having traffic means public transport is not great, even if it looks good, and the so called superblocks are not of much help either. I am for solving traffic and pollution issues but not following barcelonas example.
- qaq 4y agoas compared to ?
- TulliusCicero 4y agoYeah, now look at LA, which invested into just cars for decades, their traffic is great*! * If by great you mean second worst in the country https://www.lamag.com/article/los-angeles-traffic/ https://www.lamag.com/article/los-angeles-traffic/
- didip 4y agoAnecdotally, I agree with this approach. Downtown San Jose is a lot more vibrant whenever they shutdown streets for special events.
- ars 4y agoSomething that works when implemented infrequently tells you very little about implementing it permanently. If a couple times a year I don't have car access to my home, I'll be just fine. If you did that permanently I'd be pretty unhappy.
- GaryNumanVevo 4y agoExcept it's been implemented / studied for decades in European cities, and in many American cities for the last two years. Also, road closures aren't shutting down residential access, just allowing more foot traffic in light commercial downtown areas.
- kibwen 4y agoSame here, in Boston I randomly stumbled upon a street shut down along the entire length of the Back Bay, not for any particular event or anything, and it was like a spontaneous mile-long carnival. Washington Street at the heart of downtown has been car-free for as long as I've been here. Over in Cambridge they shut down the major road along the river every weekend in the summer and it's a delightful time to go for a bike ride or just hang out on the riverfront without the constant noise of cars.
- ghaff 4y agoNewbury Street was already a pretty narrow, notoriously parking unfriendly street--with a lot of stores/restaurants--so selectively making a street like that pedestrian only makes a lot of sense. Minimal impact from a traffic and parking perspective and a win for pedestrians. It also directly connects to parks. Shutting down (a small section of) Memorial Drive on Sundays in the summer also seems like a win. There's a parallel road on the other side of the river that can pretty much substitute at a lower traffic time, but you almost certainly wouldn't want to cut that capacity at rush hour on a weekday when both sides of the river are already horrible in terms of traffic capacity.
- ars 4y agoNo thank you. They want to somehow have every single person in a 3 block radius park on the perimeter of that area? And this is somehow supposed to make things better? I also have zero interest in walking 2 blocks to my car when I need it, nor do I want to carry my items that far from my car. I especially like: "or reducing the number of parking spaces or the number of traffic lanes, for example—actions that might catalyze bigger, more permanent changes in the future." Yes, let's make people miserable now, because it might possibly make some change later. The concept of first make things better seems to have escaped them. I'm really tired of anti-car advocates that have just a single idea: Make people too miserable to use a car, and maybe then there will be less cars. Making people miserable is not a viable strategy.
- standardUser 4y agoI'm really tired of motorists decimating our environment and wasting 40,000 human lives every year. But I guess we have different values. For example, having my car less than two blocks from me has almost no value in my view. Maintaining a livable planet and saving human live tends to have a lot of value in my view.
- ars 4y agoThen come up with a better way to get people where they need to go. Making things worse for car owners isn't the right strategy. And BTW, public transport is not good enough, not even in places like NY, you need something better.
- standardUser 4y agoEurope figured this out a generation or two ago. Visit Barcelona or Amsterdam or Copenhagen. Also, I live in NY and public transit here is certainly good enough. Where did you get the idea it is not?
- necrotic_comp 4y agoNY's public transit is not great. It works, but it's dirty, slow and unreliable.
- egao1980 4y agoUSSR had implemented this idea and it worked fine while factories / companies were providing accommodation in the walking distance along with all the necessary services - schools, hospitals, kindergartens and shops. I doubt that it would work in a modern Capitalist society unless we all work from home.
- qaq 4y agoAs most anything else it did not work in USSR either for the most part.
- ETH_start 4y agoUSSR had chronic shortages in basic consumer goods like toilet paper, steadily fell behind the West in emerging technologies like semiconductors, and eventually went bankrupt [1], so I don't think you could describe anything in its centrally planned economy. Japan has many highly mixed neighorhoods, but unlike in the Soviet example, they emerge organically, because zoning restrictions are lax. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/28/world/big-soviet-budget-deficits-are-disclosed-by-kremlin-wasteful-subsidies-blamed.html https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/28/world/big-soviet-budget-d...
- Barrin92 4y agoI'm confused, are you insinuating that Barcelona isn't real or not part of a modern capitalist society? These superblocks already exist in the city. This urban design has been around longer than the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eixample https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eixample
- egao1980 4y agoBarcelona's blocks are nice but won't work as a mostly pedestrian self contained urban unit. People have to work and get social services outside those blocks. If you scale them up a bit, add infrastructure, add workplaces and make it 10-15 walking distance and add public transit links to other such places that will do it.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
- RobertoG 4y agoThe description in the article about what "superblocks" are, is, I think, wrong. It's not a binary thing "cars" vs. "not cars at all". Inside the "superblocks" is possible to use the car. Is just that you can't go anywhere except around the super-block and you have to drive in a slow pace. Parking is also restricted to neighbors and short times for loading and unloading goods or people. All that, disincentive cars going there except for specific needs. Also a lot of space is take away from cars for common pedestrian spaces and cycling.
- Gigachad 4y agoIt's essentially a car free zone but residents can own a car and get out of the area. As an outsider the space is not accessible by car. Which is really how it should be. We might not have the whole country hooked up to amazing public transport, but we don't need to provide car access to every single space.
- RobertoG 4y agoI think that, as an outsider, you can access by car. Is just that, if you have to drive slowly, you can't park and you have to exit in the same place you entered, what's the point?
- ilikeitdark 4y agoI'm living in Barcelona, I don't own a car (and hopefully never will need to) and I'm a fan of getting rid of cars in downtown areas. But there are few downsides. Horrible pollution while they are making them, due to street closures (I'm right next to a new one under construction and I've never experienced air pollution this bad in my 20 years here. It's horrible walking my kids to school. And it will be a 9 month construction job). Also once the superblocks are built, crime increases (no traffic ie witnesses) and rents increase (pedestrian friendly area!). This has happened in other superblock areas near me.
- msoad 4y agoI'm not sure if chopped corners area a required feature of Super Blocks but man those are annoying zebra lines... You have to walk 10 meters more to use the zebra line on each intersection!
- Swizec 4y agoScramble intersections can fix this. Let all pedestrians in every direction go first, then coordinate cars, then back to pedestrians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble And I thought 2nd paragraph from Wikipedia offers an interesting insight on cultural priorities: > It was first used in Canada and the United States in the late 1940s, but it later fell out of favor with traffic engineers there, as it was seen as prioritizing flow of pedestrians over flow of car traffic. Its benefits for pedestrian amenity and safety have led to new examples being installed in many countries in recent years
- scrumbledober 4y agoI think they still do, but they at least used to have this in the SF Financial District, it was always fun walking out to lunch with hordes of people all crossing the street whichever way they wanted, including diagonally through the intersection.
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- wolpoli 4y agoIt would be much simpler creating a walkable area as part of a large scale urban renewal/redevelopment project than trying to retrofit an existing area. I wonder why there is so much focus on transforming an existing area. People should all want to buy/invest/rent in these areas designed with walking, biking, and expanded green space in mind.
- jalk 4y agoWhere were you when the cities were altered to be more car friendly. Those car owners should just have moved to some place where their cars didn't bother others /s
- YawningAngel 4y agoYou can't just go build such things in most major cities, all the available land is already developed
- 01100011 4y agoReal estate value in cities rises because of scarcity and demand which then makes any sort of redesign prohibitively expensive. Instead we opt for half-assed approaches like ADUs to provide increased density with substandard units in areas that aren't capable of handling the increased density. A better approach, if we could muster the political will, would be to raise the large amounts of capital needed to transform large swaths of low-density suburbia into a comprehensively planned neighborhood. Otherwise, short of bombing the US back to the stone age and starting again, we will be trapped by the layouts of the 20th century.
- mawise 4y agoThere's a cool approach called Transit Oriented Development[1]. You build a corridor of public-transit, and rezone the area around the corridor for higher density. Then it becomes economically viable for developers to build higher density in those areas and the urban infill can occur more organically. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-oriented_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-oriented_development
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- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chrisweekly 4y agoBarcelona remains one of my all-time favorite cities. What a great example for other cities to follow.
- rongopo 4y agoRegularity in high density is also a problem. You better think of fractal densities than of same densities across all blocks. Source: https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/12/525/2019/ https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/12/525/2019/
- D13Fd 4y agoSounds great. But good luck implementing it within the legal framework that exists in most nations, for existing cities. Plus this analysis fails to account for the environmental cost of tearing down existing structures and constructing the new ones. It's really only applicable if you are planning a new city with strong central control and sparse existing structures.
- diordiderot 4y agoNo tearing anything down. If you have a grid city just ban non emergency / public service traffic at the center of 3x3 intersection o--o--o |. |. | o--x--o |. |. | o--o--o
- IshKebab 4y agoI dunno, isn't this how you end up with Milton Keynes?
- cajimhe 4y agoI guess none of you live in Barcelona. This crap is sickening to most residents who have to deal with the chaos this city has become. I left after a decade living there, so I don't have to worry about it anymore.
- httptoolkit 4y agoCounter example: I've lived here for most of a decade, and I'm a big fan of the superillas, ejes verdes, and other plans. There's definitely some short term pain from all the construction works, but they're making steady progress, the city has already become noticeably more walkable & cycleable in many places, and I'm quite convinced that moving away from cars within the city is the right direction in the long term.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoSomehow I doubt that people hate the city becoming more walkable and bikeable as much as you claim. Are there polls indicating that people hate the superblocks?
- whoooooo123 4y agoCan't read this site on mobile because the "dismiss" button on the stupid email capture popup is hidden behind the fixed navbar so I can't click it. Why do designers do this?
- timbit42 4y agoIt's unintentional but they're hurting themselves by not testing their site more.
- monksy 4y agoI'm not sure that the super blocks are that great. From my experience they basically turned the shops, residential, and commercial into cookie cutter outlets from the block. You didn't get the unique architecture that you see in other cities, everything HAS to fit in that block. Additionally it felt like they were often far away from public transit that you needed. (The train stop may be 3 blocks away or better)
- httptoolkit 4y agoIt sounds like you're not talking about superblocks, you're just talking about the existing blocks of Eixample. The superblocks concept is that they'd be grouped together into 3x3 grids, by changing traffic rules and building urban furniture to block off streets, creating new squares and one-way systems. The goal being that everything would be far more walkable and you'd see far more local community - i.e. less of the cookie cutter shops you describe.
- monksy 4y agoI was at c pallars and d alaba.
- rob74 4y agoAt least in Barcelona, the blocks are already there and have been since the end of the 19th century - they are just grouping the blocks into superblocks where through traffic is only allowed on (on average) every third street and the rest are car free (I imagine residents can still use them).
- moffkalast 4y agoYeah, it may be a better idea to instead go for something between this and soviet style microdistricts. Slightly larger areas that don't have to be copy-paste fixed size units, roughly a 5 min walk across. Each having its own bus stop and a node of other utilities.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoThat issue seems orthogonal to creating superblocks. Superblocks just means that within a grid of NxN regular blocks, you limit car traffic and instead prioritize walking and biking. It's true that the blocks of Barcelona tend to be same-y looking, but that issue predates superblocks.
- jjcm 4y agoWhat I want more than a car-less city, is a city that properly separates out walkability from drivability. Use the superblock approach, but mandate all buildings have to be the same height and are connected to a public skyway network like so: https://i.imgur.com/hYGpQp4.png https://i.imgur.com/hYGpQp4.png You can make these roofs a proper public space rather than just being unused as they are today, and you don't have to worry about crosswalks / mixed pedestrian + car usage for roads.
- danuker 4y agoI don't see this as particularly good. I can imagine the noise and fumes from below would not make the skyways fun.
- the_gipsy 4y agoA "fireman's idea", as we would say here in Spain.
- myroon5 4y agoSkyways seem more feasible allowing different heights, no reason every single roof needs to be level and/or public
- twobitshifter 4y agoSkyway sounds difficult to deal with for accessibility. Would it rely on elevators within the superblock for access?
- Patrick_Devine 4y agoThis exists in places like Calgary (+15 Skywalk) and Edmonton (Pedways), and underground in places like Toronto (PATH) and Montréal (RÉSO) to try and separate pedestrians from snow and being sprayed by slush from cars. From a weather perspective, they're pretty nice in the winter, but they suffer from a number of problems such as weird hours, lack of step free access, and fundamentally removing you from the urban fabric of the city. Oh, and they meander everywhere so it often takes a lot longer to use them. You end up with odd liminal spaces that can sometimes feel quite dangerous.
- 4y ago
- mawise 4y agoThere was a Strong Towns article recently with a similar exploration. Their proposal was that this is actually an economically viable approach for developers to rebuild an entire block. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/8/9/lets-infill-a-traditional-neighbourhood-and-make-a-profit https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/8/9/lets-infill-a-t...
- frontiersummit 4y agoThis is already being done in a lot of places in the American Midwest, such as my city and the neighboring city where my partner lives. The form it takes is a lot less glamorous than Strong Towns disciples probably want: An entire block gets leveled and filled with cookie cutter 5-over-1s. The neighboring block also gets leveled to provide a giant parking lot for the residents. This happens even in city centers and near universities.
- jaccarmac 4y agoIf buildings are getting leveled for large parking lots, the approach is an essentially different one.
- frontiersummit 4y agoIndeed, but you can expect the architects and developers to still call themselves progressive urbanists, conveniently leaving the parking crater out of frame in all of their renders.
- wahern 4y agoA major problem, IMO, with mixed-use projects is that developers don't create a good mix of commercial spaces, and city planners don't differentiate. The vast majority of spaces are too big and expensive. Cookie-cutter isn't necessarily a problem. Though they can look quaint, even most old walkable neighborhoods contain nearly identical assortments of businesses. Most of those businesses require only very small spaces, and could never generate the revenues to pay for larger spaces while competing with big box retailers. You need many small, cheap spaces. Over time you'll eventually start to see a handful of quirky establishments pop up. But if your aim is just for the quirky establishments, setting aside only one or a handful of cheap spaces, with most targeted at chains or otherwise too large and expecting too much rent, what you'll likely end up with is a bunch of vacant commercial spaces and low foot traffic. Nothing wrong with 5 over 1 buildings, IMO. What's wrong is that the first floor invariably will have N commercial units, all too large, when they could provide 3N or 5N, all significantly cheaper and capable of supporting small proprietors. Moreover, with a larger number and assortment of businesses, that ground floor will begin to look and feel much less cookie-cutter. But I guess it's probably difficult to raise money using a pitch that features comic book stores and flower shops, rather than one that imagines a CVS or Walgreens as a tenant.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- irusensei 4y ago> "Study finds this it could work" > "restrict vehicle traffic to the streets on the perimeter" (keyword restrict, not solve) > Thread is full of opinionated people who probably never lived there. > ...used a computer algorithm to analyze data from the... So many red flags. I hate this kind of thing. Go ask the people if they like to live long term over there. I mean real people not some politicized whacko that happens to agree with you. I live in a post communist country near one of such similar places. In fact there are only 2 places in the world that have been designed with such planning and attention to detail. The aerial pic on that article actually resembles a lot the area I'm talking about. I've sent the picture to my brother who lives in the other side of the pond and he said it looks like a presidium. That area also has a really bad reputation.
- robswc 4y agoI'm always shocked at how other people live. Not in a bad way though... but I just do at least a handful of things weekly that just wouldn't work, living in a place like that. By all means tho, if people enjoy them and they 'work' then keep building them.
- thfuran 4y agoWhat kind of things?
- robswc 4y agowell, in the last week off the top of my head: - playing guitar with amp (yea, you can w/o but less fun haha) - loading up all our bikes to go to a scenic trail (getting cold, so also packing heavier clothes takes up space) - transported a ridiculously heavy side table, picked it up from friends house. - 3D printing. I suppose could be done but the fumes get unpleasant after awhile, best in a shed or garage. - bulk buying groceries to save money (technically my wife handles this but I've done it before) I'm sure I could think of a few more and I do have "edge cases" that come about because I just like to build things (usually involving PVC pipes, lol). I guess my point is that I just couldn't do many of these things in an apartment, I certainly tried ahah.
- wewtyflakes 4y agoIt seems like you just have different priorities, which is fine. Other people may prefer being able to walk to a bar instead of having to take an Uber, or being able to meet up with friends without having to make it a planned-for event, and so on. The thought of optimizing my life around loading side tables seems bananas to me, but it isn't to you, and that's cool.
- robswc 4y ago>optimizing my life around loading side tables Rather interesting (disingenuous) take away from my comment, ahah. That aside... is that not what I mostly said in my first comment? I totally agree. I don't enjoy bars. If you do and want to pay the premium for that, totally fine by me.
- oleganza 4y agoBarcelona’s blocks turn out to be not so cute. Traversing multiple blocks straight requires diagonal zig-zags eating 10% of time and you could easily lose orientation, especially if you jump into a shop on the corner. Also it’s simply annoying to see your straight path ahead and having to wave around it and then wait on a traffic light.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoOkay but that has nothing to do with super blocks, that's just the preexisting block design.
- tfrutuoso 4y agoSomeone's been playing too much cyberpunk.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoMaking cities more walkable and bikeable is cyberpunk now? Are looms and churning butter now also cyberpunk?
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- JSavageOne 4y agoI'm a huge believer in the superiority of walkable cities (the single main reason I left the U.S since outside NYC they don't exist in the U.S), but superblocks aren't my favorite approach. To me it makes everywhere look the same and kind of boring. I prefer how they do it in Asian cities like Seoul and Tokyo where they just have a lot of pedestrian streets and multistory buildings. Virtually every major European city is walkable, and I find it significantly more interesting to walk through cities like London or Paris than the boring grid superblocks of Barcelona (though I still like Barcelona).
- halfmatthalfcat 4y agoChicago is decently walkable? From the Loop you have South Loop/Chinatown, Fulton Market/West Loop and River North/Gold Cost/LP/Wrigley. NYC is obviously walkable but walkable within boroughs. Nobody is walking from Midtown to LIC or Chinatown to BK?
- jrockway 4y agoChicago definitely uses a lot of ground space for surface parking; used to live in the South Loop, and the grocery store in that area is just all parking. There is also an irritating walk across a railroad yard if you want to go to Whole Foods. You really have to bike and not walk to cover the distance. I biked a ton when I lived in Chicago; the distances were just long enough that walking was a pain but biking was trivial. In NYC, there are plenty of places exactly like Chicago. Not everywhere is a walker's paradise, and even in areas that are, car traffic is a dominating part of your life. NYC is great, but I am very jealous of Barcelona and even Paris. Very excited about congestion charging.
- baby 4y agoChicago is definitely one of the most walkable cities in the US. Not really walkable compared to a European city though.
- eigenspace 4y agoI think this is a really common misconception around Barcelona's superblocks. When people hear "Barcelona superblock", I think they're thinking of the individual city blocks which to be fair, are already huge and modular. (this is at least the confusion I originally had) The idea with superblocks, is to take a cluster of city blocks and not allow through traffic in that block, instead guiding that traffic to flow around the perimeter of that cluster. Nothing here requires the city blocks to be built or look the way Barcelona's city blocks are built and look. All that's required is changes to the roads, and to try and encourage each cluster of blocks to have a mostly self sufficient set of amenities like a grocery store, cafe, etc. In unicode art, if □ is a city Block surrounded by roads (-- and |) being used by traffic, |_| ‾|□|‾ ‾|‾|‾ then a 3x3 area of these blocks would look like _|_|_|_|_ |□|□|□| ‾|□̅|□̅|□̅|‾ ‾|□̅|□̅|□̅|‾ ‾|‾|‾|‾|‾ However, a superblock would look like this: _|_|_|_|_ |□ □ □| ‾|□ □ □|‾ ‾|□ □ □|‾ ‾|‾|‾|‾|‾ where the inside area is not easily accessible to car traffic. The structure of the block □ itself, doesn't actually matter.
- yazantapuz 4y agoIt is not just Barcelona. I live in a medium-sized town in Argentina. I have food stores, general shops, bakeries, breweries, drugstores, ice-cream shops, etc., even a school, all at walkable distances.
- Animats 4y ago"Superblocks are a relatively new urban planning concept that has been pioneered in Barcelona, Spain." No, they're not new. They've been tried many times. Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan has "superblocks".[1] That might be the first large development like this. The units near roads, not the ones facing the green spaces, are considered more desirable. And that's in Manhattan, which has really good public transportation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%93Peter_Cooper_Village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%93Peter_...
- TulliusCicero 4y agoAt a glance this seems quite a bit different: much larger than a super block, and with almost no ground level retail, which means being in the center places you quite a ways from stores/restaurants.
- crote 4y agoThat's a completely different concept, though. Peter Cooper Village in a collection of near-100% residential highrises. It is completely lacking in shops, restaurants, or bars at street level. When it comes to amenities, it is a virtual desert. Despite the lack of cars, you still can't really walk anywhere you want to go to. Due to the large number of highrises the access streets are still very car-focused and hostile to pedestrians. Additionally, the remaining space is filled with small closed-off snippets of high-density greenery. The large amount of trees block any kind of visibility from the residencies, greatly reducing safety. It reminds me a lot of the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood in Amsterdam. Constructed in the 1970s it is best-known for being unsafe and undesirable - until a massive reconstruction starting around 2000.
- lukaesch 4y agoIn 1970, the pioneers of Cancun (Mexico) designed the initial city landscape using the supermanzana pattern. This design pattern is similar to the superblock design in Barcelona. But it is better in reducing noise of traffic thanks to “bended” blocks. You can find them in the old areas of Cancun (downtown) on Google Maps. https://maps.app.goo.gl/3VKzkBwz4GwX2p976?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/3VKzkBwz4GwX2p976?g_st=ic
- yosito 4y agoI really strongly believe that city centers should ban cars completely with the exception of taxis, service vehicles, and special permits. In some cities, it might mean investing more in public transportation infrastructure, and parking on the outskirts of town at public transportation terminals. But it many cities it's very rare that you would actually need a car while in the city.
- Ekaros 4y agoWhy even allow taxis? Shouldn't the public transport be good enough for everyone? If not, just take it outside the limit and then get taxi for there.
- ithkuil 4y agoThere is a continuum in this solution space: on demand mini busses / collective taxis with various policies
- Ekaros 4y agoWouldn't those be inefficient? Isn't it better to force absolutely everyone to bigger units thus taking care of unit economies in emissions. Like full-sized busses going every 20 minutes to hour just so they will fill up.
- sershe 4y agoI think the notion of enclosed area without any traffic that is not local just works at any scale. In US, there's (very rarely) courtyard housing. Where I grew up, it looks like this: https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=38aa3a47-56e0-4667-a6b1-3ebed58b19d6&cp=55.757117~37.413794&lvl=18&style=a&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027 https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=38aa3a47-56e0-4667-a6b1-3ebed... (somehow on Google maps the setting to disable labels is not preserved in the link). These buildings are 17 stories tall and while you can drive inside the squares there's absolutely no reason to, unless you live there, and you can probably go 10 mph/15 kph if that. So, it's basically a little enclosed park for each giant building, occasionally with some services. These days, I have become enlightened and actually prefer car-centric living - in North America, but also in Western Europe from my impressions as a tourist, dense car-free areas only have any advantages whatsoever for drunk people and kids; but if I were to live in a dense place I feel like some variation of this design, with "local" space that is intentionally separated, is far superior to the kind you get in e.g. London/Munich where "local" space seems to simply be a path to get to the subway, or e.g. Vancouver (where I did live) where there simply isn't any.
- bongoman37 4y ago
- tb_technical 4y agoCyberpunk 2077 super buildings! How wonderful! No thanks.