The Cerdà plan and the Eixample are on the agenda of the Barcelona public debate. I cannot resist giving my opinion, although I am aware that the municipal elections are approaching and that everything can be read in a political key. It is not my intention.
1) The Cerdà plan has marked the urban image of Barcelona. We have been very lucky because the plan was very good. If one looks at the urban planning that replaced the Carme convent in the Raval or that of the last period of independence in Gràcia, with streets not very wide and shoddy chamfers, one realizes how visionary it was to plan blocks of 113 .3 meters, streets of 20 meters and blunt chamfers to delimit squares at each intersection. It is a miracle that those characteristics were maintained. It sure helped that the buildable area was huge.
2) The plan, however, also had flaws. One was to concentrate the urban green (not that of the great Besòs park, which was a success but which, like Montjuïc and Collserola, was peripheral) inside the blocks. Given the foreseeable dangers of densification and speculation, this design had more legal fragility than establishing parks and squares. And indeed the green was sacrificed. Fortunately, the Parc de la Ciutadella and Plaza Catalunya were saved, none of which was foreseen by Cerdà.
3) Interpret what were the intentions and the model of Cerdà has an obvious academic interest but only academic. It doesn't bind us. The planning of a city is conditioned by the reality on the ground, and by the legal framework, not by the exegesis of the works of a founder, even though they have to be studied and can help us illuminate the present. For example, the role that Cerdà gave to the groups of nine blocks is discussed. It seems to me that for him they had their own entity. From mid-street to mid-street, the blocks are 133.3 meters, a number of Kabbalistic and Masonic resonances (search the internet for Psalm 133). But there is no mystery: 133.3 is a third of 400. Cerdà must have thought of modules of 400 metres. Good to know, but irrelevant to what we now have to do.
4) It is imperative that Barcelona be much greener for the health of its residents. The rooftops will help, but bread is not going to be bought through the rooftops. Recovering apple interiors will also do this, but the possibilities are limited. The great potential receptacle of green are the streets. It was historically so. When I was young and I started visiting European cities, I was surprised that in central and northern Europe the streets did not have trees.
5) The idea spread that the genius of the Cerdà plan was that all the streets –except for a few major axes– were functionally identical. I disagree. The genius of the Cerdà plan is that urbanistically it is what most resembles a blank page available to planners at all times. Imagine that Cerdà had designed a city with a hierarchy of streets in terms of width. For example, half like the ones we now have and half like the passages. What would we do with that city?
On the uniformity that Cerdà has given us we can, if we want, differentiate. In a city with a differentiated road structure, we could not standardize and we would have much fewer degrees of freedom to adjust to the challenges of each era, be it mobility a few decades ago, now green, or whatever comes in the future. To do and undo.
