Quatre Camins, Porta Diagonal, Baricentro, Montcada Bifurcarció and El Prat Nord, among others, are impersonal enclaves, neglected, partially urbanized, but with wasteland, crossed by motorways – in some cases also by the railway – and invaded by road junctions , insurmountable barriers for those who want to cross. They are a good example of how in the metropolitan area of Barcelona the city spreads outside the urban cores, in all kinds of peripheries, to the point of creating non-places. The planning that is being worked on with 2050 as a horizon envisages transforming 15 of these areas into new central areas, with housing, economic activity and equipment. And also insert them into ten avenues that prioritize travel on foot, bicycle, bus or tram that configure a new skeleton, superimposed on the current one, which is based on large expressways segregated for cars.
The metropolis of the future aims to humanize these lost enclaves and turn them into a city. At the same time, it is proposed to better protect the non-developable surface, natural areas, forest areas, agricultural areas, parks..., in addition to interconnecting them with green infrastructures. These are surely the most innovative proposals of the Metropolitan Urban Master Plan (PDUM), initially approved and public information until October. The prediction of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB) is that the document, which will be the basis for the future planning of the territory that makes up the Catalan capital and 35 municipalities around it, where 3.3 million people live, will receive the final approval during the four-year municipal mandate that is about to begin. Then a Metropolitan Urban Planning Plan (POUMet) will be drafted that will replace the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM), which dates from 1976 and has now had no less than 1,600 modifications to adapt to the needs that have been emerging.
What is intended to be done outside the urban centers has a certain similarity with what has been done - and continues to be done - inside the cities. We want to go from a structure designed mainly for the flow of motorized vehicles to another one on a human scale, which, instead of being made up of expressways that link, for example, the places where people live with others where they work , is based on another class of connections that create activity along the routes and, therefore, can be used for shorter journeys, those that are specific to cities. And this is where metropolitan avenues come into play.
The PDUM draws ten metropolitan avenues totaling 250 kilometers. It is the new large streets of this territory that overflows the municipalities that must allow you to go from one to the other with quality. They have been designed mainly for surface public transport (fast bus or tram) and active mobility (bicycle and walking). Private motorized traffic, even if it has its place, is not the protagonist. They will take advantage of stretches of roads that are really no longer roads or sections of large segregated roads covered or with sides that can be converted into streets.
The C-58 motorway is one thing, and the N-150, which the PDUM proposes to convert to Avinguda Vallès as an extension of the Meridiana, which is also being transformed, is quite another. This old road, which connects Sabadell, already has a small section in Montcada and Reixac with a speed limit of 30 km/h and a cycle lane. The idea is to extend this model or similar ones throughout the route. Another example is the C-32 in Baix Llobregat and the old C-245. The first will continue to be a freeway. But the second is being completely changed – the works are almost finished – to be an express bus corridor, with a cycle path and wide sidewalks. It is part of the Travessera Metropolitana avenue, an axis that also includes the Ronda de Dalt – its lateral and upper roads in the covered sections – and, in the future, the B-20 to Montgat, following a similar design that one day it should come true.
The idea is to replicate these projects throughout the metropolitan area, to adapt to the characteristics of each area, so agreements between different administrations will be necessary. Thus, the PDUM has planned a Gran Via that will extend the Barcelona avenue of the same name to the south, through the old Castelldefels motorway. The Hospitalet section has been conforming to this model for years. Things are very different in the north, following the C-31 in Sant Adrià and Badalona, with a transformation, widely demanded by these municipalities, which is an enormous challenge. Another example is the remodeling of the B-23, which includes partial coverings of the highway and the opening of humanized laterals, a project on which the AMB has been working for years, but which has not seen the light of day. This axis is part of a Diagonal that goes far beyond the limits of Barcelona and would reach the Llobregat river. The other avenues planned by the PDUM are Litoral, Besòs, Reial, Carrilet, Collserola and Prelitoral.
The planned transformation is not at all easy. There are bottlenecks on the routes of the metropolitan avenues that prevent their continuity. Sometimes they are points where the roads segregated for traffic connect with the urban arteries and leave no option for the continuity of the latter without passing through the former. These are interruptions that are planned to be corrected in 11 enclaves. In the majority they coincide with future areas of centrality for which the document envisages urban developments.
The 15 new centers drawn up by the PDUM will meet the demand for housing – there is space for 217,000 new homes throughout the metropolitan area, of which at least 120,000 would be affordable – and economic activity foreseen in the same plan. They must also contribute to a better territorial balance and thus avoid the concentration of population in the current urban centers, especially in the first crown. And promote sustainable mobility, since they will take place in places that have public transport connections – most of them have or may have a railway station – and, in addition, since the metropolitan avenues pass through them, they will be ready to move with bicycle and on foot. Its strategic location makes these places ideal for locating large equipment.
According to their level of maturity, the new centralities are ordered or not ordered. The first ones already have plans underway. They are Cruïlla Sant Boi, Porta Diagonal, la Torrassa, Quatre Camins, Riera de Palau, Montgat and Besòs Central. In the second group are the areas that have a still very initial proposal (Prat Nord, Porta Delta, Baricentro, Montcada Bifurcació, Besòs-Gran Via C-31, Hospital General, TV3 Diagonal and Castelldefels UPC-Estació).
