Barcelona's School Streets Initiative: Protegim les Escoles

If there is a place in the city that we need to be safe, healthy and livable, it is near schools. Our children deserve the very best city we can give them: one that is safe and fun, healthy and nurturing. Oddly however, street design near schools has not always been considered a top priority. Of course we might have special crosswalks or signs, but few cities have devoted programs specifically to re-think the urban spaces around schools.

In the last decade, this has started to change, with the development of School Street initiatives in cities in the UK, France and Colombia. In Barcelona, the initiative is called Protegim les Escoles (Let's protect our schools), and this week the City of Barcelona announced which schools were selected as part of the 2021 cohort.

The program will consist of street calming, sidewalk extensions and in some cases the removal of vehicular lanes or the conversion of a chamfered corner within Cerda's urban grid into a public space. With a budget of 5.4 million euros and aiming to reach over 60 schools, this program has the potential to create safer, healthier and more vibrant public spaces for our kids and their families. More details are available in the press release published on 20 February 2021.

What will be the environmental impacts of the program? Will the new public spaces be used? by whom? How can the program measure success?

I look forward to learning more about this exciting urban experiment to improve our city for our kids.

Comments

Kids on Bikes: Bicibus in Barcelona's Eixample

Photo credit: Patricia Alvarez @patalgar The image of kids riding their bike to school in a big city is highly inspiring. Kids on bikes. Together in a group, going to school. Pedalling together along city streets, each on their own, yet together in unison. Yesterday we saw images of the first Bicibus in the Eixample grid of Barcelona (see here or here ). You can think of BiciBus as a sort of critical mass for kids going to school. This was not the first Bicibus in Barcelona, that honor goes to the group in Sarrià, and yet the first group in the Eixample somehow feels like a turning point. If we can insert kids on bikes here, we can do it anywhere. @BicibusEixmaple is an experiment that we should all be watching closely. Until recently, most #BiciBus projects have been in smaller towns, with bikable streets and distances that are amenable to cycling school commutes for kids and parents. In the suburbs, one can ...

The Gender Gap in Urban Cycling

What is the gender gap in urban cycling and why is it a key indicator for an equitable and just city? We know that improving cycling infrastructure has become an essential best practice in urban planning - to reduce carbon emissions, to improve health, to slow the city down, to reduce air and noise pollution. But does everyone benefit equally from new bike lanes? If the dominant users are white males, are city investments reinforcing gender inequality? How do we estimate the proportion of female cyclists and bike lane users in a city and what can be done to reduce gender differences? What would a cycling network look like if it were designed by and for women? What types of bike lanes are better for women? If planners were to incorporate a feminist perspective in the design of new cycling infrastructure, what would this look like? Thinking about gender equity in urban cycling policy and design opens a whole range of questions that urgently need to be addressed to create an e...

Superilla Barcelona

The city of Barcelona has made an important step in their journey to become a greener city . The Mayor Ada Colau and her team announced the winners of the Superilla Barcelona design competition for the street re-design of four streets in the Eixample grid: Consell de Cent, Compte Borrell, Rocafort and Girona - and the conversion of four vehicular intersection into green plazas. The protagonist of this transformation is Consell de Cent , a street 2.8 km in length aiming to be the pioneer green corridor, and the test be of ideas for a much wider transformation. With a budget of 37.8 million Euros, the immediate goal is to complete the green corridor on Consell de Cent and the four plazas by February 2023 - and yet the ambition is clearly wider. As illustrated by the name of the project, Superilla Barcelona , this is not to be a one-off city greening project, rather they are talking about a new urban model for Barcelona's Eixample district, and a full overhaul of what it f...

City Lab Barcelona

Search This Blog