City Lab Barcelona

City Lab Barcelona is a blog about experiments in urban planning. The word 'experiments' can take on different meanings, and here I use 'experiment' to refer to 'doing things that are new or different' but also, and perhaps more importantly, 'to test formal hypothesis about how cities work'. Experiments are always exciting because we do not know in advance what the outcome may be. In this sense, city planners are experimenting all the time, testing new ways of engaging with the public or new ways of promoting sustainability.

I have already made the case for formal urban experiments in the City Fix and academic writings such as here and here. This blog will be a place to extend my argument for urban experimentation. I also hope to engage in productive exchange and learn from others who are 'thinking experimentally'.

Right now, most urban experiments are informal and there are very few formal experiments. I hope (and expect) that in the next decade we will increasingly see more formal urban experiments that will help us learn about how cities work.

My laboratory for urban experimentation in the next decade will be the city of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). As a compact city, with a fascinating urban history and a progressive electorate, Barcelona has already developed several provocative urban experiments, making it the ideal city in which to push these issues further.

Inevitably, this blog will include commentary on urban experiments being developed by local city planners who are working on novel programs, street designs and new city configurations that aim to make this city more livable and healthier. What can we learn from these city experiments? If we experiment, what are we learning?

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 imagine asking kids to bike to school together in a group t

New Beginnings for City Lab Barcelona

In September 2021 I began a new research position at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology ( ICTA ) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). It has been a pleasure to meet new colleagues and get settled down in a beautiful eco-friendly building that is LEED Certified. I look forward to focusing my research agenda on Barcelona and this blog will be a platform for sharing some of the research ideas that are emerging, and become sort of the embryo for the new research team based at ICTA. My new research group will be called City Lab Barcelona and our mission will be the generation of new knowledge that accelerates the transition to sustainable urban planning and design . To call a research team a Laboratory or Lab has become quite fashionable recently, especially in the social sciences. I welcome this analogy because there is much that we social scientists can learn from those researchers that run physical labs - of course, adapting as appropriate. In the case

CICLOBCN21

The CICLOBCN21 Conference brought together cycling organizations, activists, city policy makers, transportation wonks, academics, and cycling entrepreneurs on 7-9 October 2021 in Barcelona. As one of the largest cycling conferences in the Iberian Peninsula, it attracts cycling experts from Spain and Portugal. It felt wonderful to participate in an in-person conference again, to chat face-to-face and meet new people. For me it served as an introduction to the cycling community in Barcelona (and beyond), on a topic where I expect to be conducting research in the years ahead. Here are my personal take-aways from the CICLOBCN21 conference: *Cycling policy is activist driven. That is, a small group of committed and knowledgeable individuals have been pushing for change, and in most instances, the policy transformations are in response to organized pressure. My sense is that success is the result of close collaboration between the cycling experts and the administration. The gover

City Lab Barcelona

Search This Blog