City Lab Barcelona

             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 ...

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 ...

What are the elements of a research laboratory that studies urban questions? How might one systematize the study of cities? What does an urban model look like? To what extent can research on cities resemble methods in the natural and physical sciences? To what extend should it differ? And is it worthwhile pursuing a general theory of cities, planning or urban science?  These are the questions that preoccupied the urban theorist, architect and intellectual, Manuel de Solà-Morales ( 1939-2012 ).   I first came to read Manuel de Solà-Morales (MdSM) when I picked up his book The Ten Lessons on Barcelona - and it blew my mind. The book is based on his class lectures to architecture students, and it distills 10 fundamental lessons that Barcelona can teach us. It is a beautifully written account on the history and transformation of the city.  Now I have the chance to understand his full body of work in a collection of essays carefully selected to represent his intellectual...

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...

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...

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...

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 d...