Urban planning paradoxes and sociospatial fragmentation: The Superblock Barcelona Case (2016–2023)

Abstract

Barcelona is an interesting living laboratory for studying the role of the local scale in urban planning. Since the early stages of what is known as the Barcelona Model (1979–1994), analysis of Barcelona’s urban planning based on the creation of public spaces at a local scale has become a priority. More recently, micro-scale urban planning has become dominant in addressing global challenges such as climate change within the framework of the New Urban Age paradigm. In this article we analyse the paradoxes between the ideology (local-centrism) and practices (tactical urbanism) of this paradigm, based on an original perspective of the Superblock Barcelona project, contrary to the criticisms levelled against this project so far, which emanate mainly from economic lobbies in Barcelona. While cities seek to tackle global-scale climate change, urban planning is being increasingly restricted to acting at local or micro scales. These paradoxes lead to sociospatial fragmentation and denial of other urban-phenomenon scales, such as the metropolitan/regional one. We frame this article within the critical urban studies perspective, following the planetary urbanization hypothesis. The analysis of the Superblock Barcelona project is based on the logic of ‘making cities by making less city’ and focuses on how the local scale, the districts and neighbourhoods ‘burst against the city’, questioning the very right to the city.