Superblocks: How Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

What people said

toomuchtodo · 2024-12 · Reference

I think there is a potential, limited path to success here (depending on what "success" looks like), and it’s likely assisting parents in clustering (via subsidizing moving expenses and affordable family housing) around schools that remain (because many are closing due to funding cuts and the demographic cliff) to maintain walkability for both school commute and socialization. It’s a bandaid, but the only option I see viable considering the cost of re-engineering urban planning to fix decades of car centric policy. Those costs are enormous, and I think in a lot of cases, it’ll be cheaper to allow some places to go terminal/fallow as their population declines. This doesn’t juice the fertility rate (because it doesn't appear anything will), but it will make childhoods suck less for kids already here and those on the way for the foreseeable future (as well as improve parental experience). Barcelona Superblocks is my mental model on this topic. [LINK] [VIDEO]

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IlegCowcat · 2019-06 · Reference

Ahh this is a new article from 2019. I remember the 2016 Vox video when they were putting in the first Superblocks. [VIDEO] Good to see Barcelona is going ahead with the Superblocks. Found a 2018 video by those great Streetfilms folks: [LINK]

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sreenadh · 2017-05 · Reference

I believe that India has to leapfrog the whole car obsession and move over to an effective and extensive public transportation and make cities more “superblocks" like in Barcelona ( [VIDEO] ). Adam ruins Cars ( [LINK] ) is a rather informative piece you should watch.

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