I walk through Consell de Cent on a sunny day in February. The street is turned upside down, undergoing an accelerated transformation process to convert what was a typical street in the Eixample into one of its first green axes. Activity is frenetic: nowhere else in the city are there so many operators working together. There is no trace of asphalt left. The sidewalk on the mountain side has a width similar to the usual one. But the one on the sea side has widened to eleven meters. The trapezoidal tree pits have also grown: their length is variable, sometimes exceeding seven meters. They are so big that in some of them there is, next to the tree, a lamppost.
Consell de Cent is the longest on plan (a total of twenty blocks) of the four green axes promoted by the City Council of Mayor Ada Colau (BComú), who after two terms aspires to a third in the municipal elections in May. The other three (of no more than six blocks), which cross it, forming wooded squares of up to 2,000 square meters at their intersections, are Rocafort, Borrell and Girona. A fourth square will be at the intersection with Granados. If the works are finished on time, before the elections, they will be the calling card of the mayor's urban policy: streets without private cars, returned to pedestrians, with more spaces, greener and healthier.
From an urban point of view, Barcelona has been many things. Not to go any further back, we will remember that it has been the city of Cerdà, of Modernism, of Gaudí, of the Olympic transformation and of the so-called Barcelona Model. Any of these phases has made the people of Barcelona proud, has attracted visitors and has made local urban planning an international reference. The Barcelona that outlines its new reform wants to be different and breaks the functional logic of some of the previous ones, especially that of Cerdà.
The architect Josep Bohigas, director of Barcelona Regional, of the Urban Ecology Agency, and one of the apologists for this transformation, says: “We are living in a very exciting moment, that of the hatching of our project. When Consell de Cent and the other four axes are inaugurated, the reform will be liked and will be unstoppable. Whoever wins the elections, this line of action will continue”.
Damià Calvet, former president of the Port of Barcelona, and head of urban habitat in the candidacy of Xavier Trias (Junts), believes that “the superblock model, which by the way is not an invention of the current mayor's office, should be reviewed. We are not going to reverse what has been done in the Eixample, but it is obvious that the tranquility of the residents of Consell de Cent will be paid for by those of a street in Valencia overflowing with cars. You have to rethink the model. This does not mean that we cannot say that our urban philosophy can be summed up as follows: the city usable on foot, with neighborhoods full of life”.
Oriol Clos, chief architect of Barcelona in the days of mayor Jordi Hereu, and now a member of the advisory council of Ernest Maragall, the ERC mayoral candidate, agrees in part with Bohigas, but only in part. “It is unimaginable to think of undoing a work like the one that is being finished at Consell de Cent. But it doesn't seem like a sustainable model to me. It is essentially a work on the surface, before which drainage or use of water or garbage collection, etc., have not been integrated. You have to work differently. 50 million should not be invested in the work of a single street. Municipal intervention must be more diluted and contaminate the entire city, less directed at a few objectives that end up denying others. There is a way to go in the recovery of apple interiors. Mobility must be improved, but not by cutting streets, but by going to the origin of the problem, in the Metropolitan Area.”
Daniel Mòdol, who was Councilor for Architecture, in the ranks of the PSC, during the first term of Ada Colau, and advises the socialist candidate Jaume Collboni, is now critical of the mayoress's urban work. “She works in the urban area with strong political criteria and, therefore, is committed to short-termism. I do not see transformative strategies in the background. All focus is placed on the reform of public space, which is the one that has the greatest impact on citizens, also on mobility. It has opted for an urbanism with regulation that is more prohibitionist than propositive. Does anyone really think that the most urgent thing in Barcelona are the superblocks?
“We work in many areas,” says Bohigas. In the Coastal Plan, which implies a change of direction towards the blue economy. Or in the Llobregat Delta. Or in Besòs, where vulnerable neighborhoods abound and we have an agenda with 179 projects. Or in a new agreement with Collserola, where to promote the green economy and open ways to connect it with the blue one”.
“Most of these projects – says Mòdol – remain on paper, in books at most. Meanwhile, basic projects such as Sants or Sagrera continue with an uncertain future. Subsidized housing remains a pressing problem; in eight years 2,500 have been made; the margin of growth is limited and, nevertheless, an annual deficit of 10,000 is generated. The reservation of 30% of flats in new real estate developments has failed, reducing them to a minimum, slowing down activity... We are at density levels of the last century and the only way to combat that is by losing the fear of working at height: Barcelona is the great city with the fewest towers in Europe”.
“I don't always value positively the models that are presented as disruptive,” says Clos. It seems to me that the last 40 years have been good, and that there were certain constants along the way. The reform of Paseo Sant Joan, started with Hereu and finished with Trias, was a success, and, with nuances, it connects with what is done now. What has been lost is the search for consensus. There is a lack of discussion, complicity, pact”. In this, Clos agrees with Mòdol, who affirms: "The different political forces should sign an urban pact that would allow them to work in the medium and long term, joining forces, with continuity." And with Calvet: "There have been eight years of arrogant, highly ideologized urbanism, in which the City Council has behaved, in this matter, like a refractory bunker to other proposals."
