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?

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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 ...

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 adm...

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...

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