What New York Can Learn from Barcelona’s ‘Superblocks’
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It is (I believe) a temporary project to explore how it all might work. In that sense, it's prototype and that's in fact really cool too. Basically they did an MVP of a Superille - low cost and very fast - in order to validate their hypotheses.
They mocked up the place to give people a feel of how living in this way could be. And they spent as little as possible - using old tyres and paint and recycled plywood to mark out spaces and make them feel "owned" by the people. Placing large lots of (quite big) trees and plants in pots on the car-free streets to see how it felt to walk down a street that was leafy and spacious and open.
The amount of extra space feels inspiring and liberating. Walking is faster if you want it to be - you can cut across streets and don't need to wait at stop signals. A lot of people riding bikes. A lot of smiles.
They definitely could have done a better job explaining it though. I have friends who support the idea but felt they could have been better informed. It felt like they didn't give enough warning.
However, what is interesting and cool is that once it was in place they did their best to engage residents in a dialogue about the proposal - they painted markings on the tarmac of the streets to lay out spaces for people to assemble and discuss. They had a soapbox platform for people to rant from, and a bunch of chairs scattered around the street for people to sit and discuss. They had walls for comments to be posted.
I certainly hope they go ahead with making it permanent and making more of them.
Cities without care are very different and much more humane places to live. Scale matters and cars warp the scale of a city in ways that are counterproductive to vibrant urban life.
I'm pretty sure we can overcome the technical issues that restrain us from our inevitable transition away from routine private car use in cities. Problems like what to do about parking are a legacy of the current broken system, not a fact of nature. The economic incentives to car ownership and the infrastructure that supports it are baked into cities right now. But this can change - but not by solving parking but by solving the underlying system and that includes pressuring the system to change through initiatives like this.
Cars and their infrastructure are indeed ugly and dangerous, but we have them because they so drastically increase the quality of life available to those who can't or won't pay the rent in the same superblocks as their jobs (or move to tenements).
Increasing the luxuriousness of this kind of premium housing would seem to come at the cost of extracting yet more free time from those who need to come into or through these areas but can't live in them, or yet more money from those who decide to stretch their housing budgets. It'd be entirely appropriate coupled with a massive increase in rail infrastructure or something, but on its own is concerning.
I'll be very interested to see whether US cities that adopt this model can add supply faster than people who used to commute can bid up the price of close-to-everything housing. My guess is no, not even close, a few elites get great lives and everyone else is driven to exurbs.
Center of large city (i. e. new York, Paris):
Above a certain density, public transport becomes the norm across all income levels (cf. bankers in New York).
Suburb of large city down to towns:
For commuters coming in from the suburbs, there are hundreds of cities that show that rail is an option that's affordable and it usually takes 1/2h to the city center.
What motivates people to buy cars seems to be mostly daily life within the suburbs: shopping, getting children to school etc. This is a failure of city planning, because it's perfectly feasible to combine the density of a suburb with local subcenters that provide all daily needs (schools, shopping, medical etc.) within walking distance (let's say 1.5 miles).
Taking the worst as an example, the density of Atlanta's suburbs is about 1000/sq mile (http://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/city-vs-city/6570...). Meaning there are 7074 people within a mile of any given point. That's plenty to sustain the infrastructure to provide for daily needs, although it may mean a need for more, but somewhat smaller schools/shops etc. (If this isn't convincing, consider that Atlanta is the worst of the worst in terms of waste of space. You can easily fit 10000 people within a mile^2 and still have backyards for everyone).
It's only rural living that requires a car. The quality of live in large cities will dramatically increase in the next few years, if only because self-driving cars and car sharing require far fewer parking spots. These make up about half of the space required for cars right now, meaning their abolition could double the space available for pedestrians.
Miscommunication, neighbours not knowing about the change or what it entailed.
Worse trafic on the main streets out of the superblock, with people that are thinking about leaving.
Having to train children to act differently on the main streets than in the ones in the superblock, as on the later streets they can be more oblivious, like in the park, but all look similar.
Bussinesses loosing tons of bussiness, a couple of bussinesses have reported losses of 40% and 50%.
All this while we know that drivers use the car because they need to, not because they want. Yes, there are alternatives, but you use the car when the alternatives are worse.
So, as I said, I like the idea, but we have to work in the implementation.
[1] in Catalan http://www.elperiodico.cat/ca/noticias/barcelona/veins-lamen...
"" Noone can stop it
The latest rumors report that, after the first days of confusion in which many people (myself for example) had just did not understand the superblock Poblenou is so successful that the council considers mounted another even fatter. Instead of the nine islands now recovered and released to the public, the new superblock, which would be the Eixample district, in aggregate compensar- eighties. Sepúlveda go to Paris and Rocafort Aribau, including the four islands of the Clinic. The proliferation of space-and the undeniable fact that trim the circulation paths as important as Roma Avenue, the street Aragon and Great fea- would be a traffic calming infinitely superior to that now allows Poblenou.
In addition, it could hold more activities, not just those that are in the Poblenou. Convert planters of trees of the streets in small urban gardens so residents are planted to tomatoes from parsley. Every afternoon at five, would mime workshops all corners of the street Villarroel. At the intersection of Valencia Viladomat, barbecues because residents can cook sausages grilled tofu and mushrooms in which they exist. Years rain soon, like this, if the mushrooms are imported (Soria, Romania ...) it is verified Mushroom Fair Trade. Without this accreditation we are not allowed to use the picnic tables that are installed because citizens can enjoy these products along with their children. Saying that both barbecues and picnic tables would be designed for students and students of architecture, in a gesture of solidarity and protest sustainable. Once a week, the space freed Gran Via Casanova push forward the Factory of Ideas: a neighbor or neighbor tells a thought that has had this thought and then under discussion between all. It also may explain dreams, which are analyzed equally between everyone.
I can not conclude without noting that bus routes to be amended to avoid going through this supersuperilla would not be fixed. Each driver is free to choose what you want, you also can change from one day to another. This will not only encourage the creativity of colleagues and drivers but the genius of passengers and passenger. That could be targeted opening in September 2018, coinciding with the Feast of Mercy. And I forgot: stretched between the buildings around this area and recovered released settled zip, overflying stops caramelized apples that would allow it (the zip, no stops) than boys and children and adults, and adults could interact with each other and vice versa. ""
[1] http://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20160922/41483140507/aix...
Side note, anyone here work at or know about Pier 01 down near the water? I just walked by there and was wondering what kind of companies were located there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atJuzEhkRDg
http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20160802/4036244...
But actually, super blocks aren't closed to traffic, they enforce slow traffic speeds -- like 5MPH. A van could still cruise by at 5MPH and steal a moped, but it would be super obvious in a crowded super block.
Like you, I didn't find a superblock but I think that's due to it being a concept and not something you can necessarily visually see (as explained in the somewhat recent Vox video).
That was the original design. The idea was to have a park inside all blocks. But you know... greet happened.
This is the result from the original idea to the final state: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Evolucio...
:) mopeds (or rather "scooters" and "vespas" in Italy) get stolen left right and centre. They are used more than bikes simply because they require less effort - they are the closest modern equivalent to horses, the transportation method for which old European cities were actually built.
I'm not sure how you're making this comparison, but if we're gonna compare machines to horses, the bicycle was invented in the 19th century to compete with horses, before automobiles were invented.
That's because they don't exist yet, except for one temporary one that was created last month.
Also their way of having dedicated bus lanes.
When you look at Barcelona an how they build there it is obvious that they (currently or at least in the recent past) do not have that problem.
That's also one of the reasons why the Chinese can complete a large infrastructure project like a skyscraper in a few months while we need half a decade for the same task.
Alon Levy has a good blog that steadily beats the drum about US costs and what can be done to fix them:
https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/category/transp...
Does this mean that everything built back then is built bad? Why does the Empire State Building still stand?
http://www.catalannewsagency.com/business/item/barcelona-el-...
[0] http://sf.streetsblog.org/2016/02/18/muni-taraval-meeting-me... [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Car-crashes-into-Muni-...
As for the 2nd, people run into stuff in the cars all the time. Around 50-100 people die each day on US roads. And in the story you mentioned only the people in the car were injured, nobody on the train.
http://koin.com/2014/04/01/1-hurt-car-max-crash-portland/ http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/06/max_col... http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/05/max_blu... https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/3d5i9g/saw_an_ora...
There may be more to it in Portland than "at grade", but that certainly seems to be a large component of the problem.
The construction of the Barcelona subway caused the collapse of at least one building, and over 50 needed to be evacuated in El Carmelo neighborhood.
Currently the construction of the subway is under investigation due to fraud, and bribery in the national court.
But it's 9.7km, originally planned at 680 million euro, now estimated at 3.1 billion euro (project started in 2009, currently expected to be completed in 2018). That works out to $360m/km or so, not that bad compared to the worldwide average.
NYC has a LOT of people living in every area of the city. There is a lot of construction and residential deliveries, and emergency traffic. Certain areas have become pedestrian plazas, and some are closed off during the weekend but it is simply not possible to close off a significant amount of space. Anyone driving to Manhattan especially during peak times is not doing it out of convenience as it is extremely inconvenient to drive there. Often people have tools and equipment, and parking in garages in Midtown can easily cost you $40-$60.
If you live or are visiting NYC it is a nice thought to have pedestrian only roads. But we have to remember that the trades people that make city life possible really need roads to work.
With respect to deliveries, if the sides of streets weren't given away to free parking, delivery vehicles would be free to use loading zones.
Most people don't advocate the removal of four-wheeled motor vehicles. They advocate the removal of private cars.
(also, superblocks aren't pedestrian-only streets)
In NYC I would expect the biggest problem would be the grid system. Closing off straight roads wouldn't really make a pedestrian nexus which is what makes these work.
Turning chunks of downtown pedestrian up to maybe TriBeCa would work fantastically well though.
http://www.georgiastreetindy.com/
A street that has pedestrian/event space in the center and one lane roads on the outside. This street connects the Convention Center to the Bankers Life Field House (where the Pacers play).
Perhaps I can see this being tested in another borough in an area with lower density.
I would suggest that roads closed to most vehicle traffic would be open to delivery trucks, like in most old european town centres, and or delivery is made by smaller vehicles. In the long-term, I can imagine a new model of city infrastructure that allows easy small-scale delivery with some standardized container system and small electric vehicles.
If you are looking for an example in Barcelona, it should only be l'eixample, which is one of architectural and engineering successes of 20th century.
And many times a very big fact is overseen: Barcelona is a village comparing to other big cities of the world. It is famous, popular, a great touristic destination in the summer but in the winter it is a village. A small city where people has normal, calm life. You can't compare it to any metropolitan city.
Compared to what? It has 1.6 million people. Counting metropolitan area, you have nearly 5 million people. And, unfortunately, spanish cities are quite dense (compared to other european cities at least)
But that part rarely happens. Everyone loves doing the easy part (ban cars!). No one wants to do the hard part of still letting people and stuff get around somehow.
It's like saying "sewers smell gross, we should ban them", while conveniently ignoring the fact that thousands of people are still going to generate wastewater, and it's has to go somewhere.
I bet most planners who let cars into cities had some kind of vested interest in doing so.
Has this happened somewhere, that cars have been banned in an area, and all the businesses have closed since no one could travel there anymore?
This is sort of necessarily true - people wouldn't be choosing to drive unless they felt it was better than alternatives. Taking away that option is necessarily forcing them into worse alternatives.
This is absolutely not "necessarily true." It's possible that driving has large negative externalities and requires large public expenditures, to the extent that while for any individual trip we'd be happier driving, we'd be even happier if we could coordinate non-driving. I love living in a car-unfriendly place, because while it might be less pleasant and more stressful when I do have to drive, it's wonderful to be able to walk or ride my bike to the grocery store, work, parks, playgrounds, etc.
Second, this is a bizarre way to use the word "coercion." It isn't like our existing infrastructure is some neutral ideal and I prefer "car-unfriendly" designs--spending $1.1 billion to add lanes to the 405 freeway in LA isn't a gift from god, it's a government subsidy for a particular behavior. Living in Orange County without a car, getting around involved walking or biking along busy, unpleasant multilane arterials with 45+mph speed limits (quieter streets were inevitably cul de sacs that spit you right back out into the meat grinder). I didn't think "hm, I find driving pleasant, so I will drive." I decided that driving would be dramatically less likely to result in my sudden death than riding--on streets like that.
People in Amsterdam choose to bike because they feel it's better than the alternatives. People in LA choose to drive for the exact same reason. If you think the difference is the amount of "coercion" they face, then you need to be able to explain why my current neighbors are being "coerced" while my former neighbors in OC are not.
Is this a thing they're actually doing? Surely induced demand is well-known by now?
>we'd be even happier if we could coordinate non-driving
was more central to what you were getting at. I've never really thought of the presence of other drivers as a primary or even ancillary reason to also drive. Far more important are things like the weather, duration of the trip, physical exertion, cargo capacity, do I want to be sweaty and tired when I get there, is there a locker room with a shower, etc. In Milwaukee, Chicago, and Berkeley I've always felt like the separation of pedestrians and bikes from cars was pretty good.
There are places where it's dangerous to bike in the Milwaukee and Chicago metros, but they were also the kind of places you'd never visit unless you lived in them, and I didn't.
It sounds like LA could solve your problem with better sidewalks and bike lanes at much lower net cost to everyone else.
I guess people in LA are being coerced to drive, but plenty of other places facilitate driving, cycling, and walking safely at the same time.
The more interesting tension (to me) is between density and parking, where my basic argument is that parking inhibits density but is also inclusive of a much larger land area (and therefore people paying lower rents), while dense areas without parking are great for their residents but coercive to the people who can't or don't want to pay the rents in them.
> Their quality of life just declines.
In my experience and imho this article comes to the same conclusion life gets better for most if you ban cars from the city.
The presence of pedestrians inherently makes other forms of transportation worse. Pedestrians commit most murders. Pedestrian intrude on spaces for motor and bicycle traffic. They cross the street without thought for other traffic.
I could go on.
It sure does! That's why we need more rail-like bus designs, with physically separated lanes and dedicated signals. Buses shouldn't be driving in the same lanes as cyclists, and their routes shouldn't be designed to minimize turning, and when they do, it shouldn't be during a regular crosswalk cycle.
> Pedestrians commit most murders.
Oh, come on. This isn't even worth addressing, but if I must, please compare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
with:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
I'm totally in favor of eradicating guns, though, which ought to help with the murder problem.
Are we participating in the same conversations?
In my experience, people trying to "get rid of cars" generally advocate for public transit and bike/pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. Their goal might be something like Copenhagen or Amsterdam. They're certainly not looking forward to living in a wasteland full of people wishing they had some way to travel across town. Case in point, you seem to have come away from this article thinking it's saying "ban cars for no reason!" when in fact it has a heavy focus on making life better for pedestrians. Traveling by foot is a form of transportation!
In practice, the "get rid of cars" part happens (because it's free), and bike lanes get drawn (because it's effectively free to paint lines). But the transit never gets built (because that would cost money). The net amount of transit capacity drops in most of these changes, even as most cities are experiencing population growth.
For example, this article mentions building superblocks in NYC, while neglecting to mention that NYC subway system has been over capacity for over a year - http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-subway-system-cant-kee... Superblocks in NYC would literally eliminate transit capacity and replace it with nothing. It's net destruction to capacity. It's suburbanizing an urban environment.
> Traveling by foot is a form of transportation!
I love to walk too, but if walking were a viable option, the cars wouldn't exist in the first place. This isn't some American stripmall being discussed -- Both NYC and Barcelona are already quite dense, and some of the most walkable cities on Earth. If more walking were possible, it would already occur.
And yet, some people are still driving cars there, even though it's already extremely inconvenient to do so. We should be studying why it's occurring, and offering up legitimate alternatives that are better than the current solution.
---
It's a common new urbanist trope, to read some Jane Jacobs and then blame cars for every problem in the entire universe. But cars aren't some evil villain -- they simply represent a person, who needed to go to a place, in a reasonable amount of time.
The best way to eliminate cars is not to punish that person who just wanted to get somewhere efficiently -- they've done no wrong. The best way to reduce cars is to provide better (cheaper, faster, easier, safer) ways to get places that don't require cars, let people voluntarily choose these better options.
New urbanists are great at talking about that. But they're not great at actually doing that. They'd (usually) rather hit people with sticks, than offer up carrots. Which is a shame.
They also represent negative externalities - both in air/noise (HONK HONK HONK) pollution and in human cost. Why should a person who chose to take up more space and introduce these externalities be favored over a person that is using significantly less space and not producing those externalities.
> The best way to reduce cars is to provide better (cheaper, faster, easier, safer) ways to get places that don't require cars
This requires removing the cars! Buses don't work well if the streets are clogged with cars (see: 23rd St. a few months ago vs. 23rd St. now, a huge improvement, and SBS hasn't even been enabled yet). Opponents of street safety improvements love to scream above truck deliveries, but truck deliveries would certainly be easy if there weren't private cars and taxis clogging up the street and using free parking, instead of having empty streets and adequate loading-only zones.
> They'd (usually) rather hit people with sticks, than offer up carrots.
Is hitting people with metaphorical sticks worse than hitting them with literal cars? That's what's happening in New York currently, people are run down all the time, and the killers get away with it almost every time. This isn't just about walkability, it's about crossing the street without feeling like my life is in danger. I've almost never seen a car be ready to turn and actually stay out of the crosswalk until all of the people have left it.
Who murdered Matthew Von Ohlen? The police found the car that did it, will we ever find out who owns it? Probably not.
Bullshit. Walking is a viable option for a lot of people. So is cycling, and public transport.
Driving is just too easy, takes you from where you are right now, with no waiting, climate controlled.
You could never beat that with any other system.
I live in a dense part of Manhattan. I barely know anyone who owns a car, and the few who do do not rely on them for daily transportation; they're more of a "weekend fun get-away" kind of thing. I bike everywhere, but I recognize that a lot of people who otherwise would do not because they are (rightfully) afraid of how dangerous it can be. Start to deprioritize cars, further densify Citi Bike, and you will see an explosion of trips taken via bike. The vast, vast majority of trips that occur in Manhattan are already not being made by private cars, so we don't particularly view it as a big loss if that is cut down further to the detriment of 5% of people if it benefits the other 95% who walk/bike/take transit everywhere.
But again, you seem to be under the impression that we want to get rid of cars and not do anything to improve transit. That simply isn't the case. We want better mass transit, we want more subway lines, we want faster bus service that runs in exclusive lanes that doesn't get gummed up by other vehicles, we want more bike lanes, and we want the elimination of free on-street parking to pay for some of it and make room for all of the above.
* We could walk to: supermarket, kids schools, pizza, pastry shop, ice cream place.
* We could bike downtown when it was nice out, and preferred to.
* Public transportation took us downtown conveniently, with the kids or when the weather was inclement.
* We had a car to go further afield, or haul a larger load of groceries.
[1] http://www.stopcancerportugal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03...
I live in the West Village and just got back from picking up my weekly farm delivery six blocks away. The vegetables were picked probably in the last 36 hours and are consistently the most delicious I've tasted, including compared to my parents' gardens, where I can eat them off the vine.
I walked to the pickup place and back in less time I've seen people wait in line, or even walk from their car to the entrance of a supermarket.
In NYC, the elderly and disabled have no natural access to these kinds of services unless they live a block or two away from such an establishment, for the simple reason that hardly anyone living in NYC owns a car. Yes, they can take a cab, and that makes it feasible, but economically speaking, the most common outcome is these people are dependent on the bodega on their block to provide their food.
The elderly people (>75) I know don't often go to places like Home Depot. In Barcelona supermarkets will be within walking distance -- if I've found the correct area on Google Maps, there are at least 3 within 300 metres of each other.
The only things I've ever had delivered by car or truck are things for which I would need a car or truck to pick up (furniture, more bags of groceries than I can carry.)
http://gothamist.com/2016/10/04/pedestrian_killed_by_bus_dri...
I posted this yesterday on HN, and am glad to see some discussion around it. Just curious that the new submission didn't get mapped back to the old one – I've usually get linked back to an already posted article if I repost it after a short time.
This is more like the budget version of that. Don't really solve the big issues, don't really improve the central areas.
What would make this better is consolidation; actually moving the parking to the interlink point of the node, making it faster for a pedestrian to get from there to their home, or another point within the node. Improving the center so that it's more of an actual park, possibly with the shopping at level around it. Raising the standard of integration, interaction, and building codes for noise/fire suppression.
The hype is well ahead of the reality.
You can find plans for more superblocks, but the official website is mostly in Catalan only, so it might not be too helpful to you (assuming you don't speak Catalan)
That's not an "argument" -- that's simply a fact that is what proponents praise them for (keeping neigborhoods quite and safe by keeping out through traffic by providing no access to anywhere traffic would want to go) and what critics criticize them for (preventing efficient transit or foot traffic by lengthening routes to any road that provides access to any place you'd like to go.)
(2) I don't see evidence that they do the same thing, so even if it is the same people, there's no inherent inconsistency: both reduce local traffic, but by very different means which have different effects. Superblocks don't create a hierarchical network which favors long travel routes but prevents through traffic, superblocks don't create a road system that lacks through access on main corridors within easy walking distant so as to support mass transit, and superblocks don't increase walking/bike travel distance by the manner in which they reduce local motor vehicle traffic.
More importantly, in my opinion, it's not a cul-de-sac for pedestrians, which avoids the terrible result of taking the car to go to the supermarket 300m away simply because there's no way to walk from A-to-B.
The real solution, although we're starting to go tangential here, is to do what Toronto has done and build a massive city-spanning series of underground pedestrian passages and malls. I've walked through a large part of the system and it is pretty astounding.
Here's a map of it: http://www1.toronto.ca/City%20Of%20Toronto/Economic%20Develo...
I like the other commenter's idea of above-ground enclosed passages with access to sunlight and windows. That sounds need. Vegas actually has something sort of similar on the Strip, but for different reasons. I think that, at least in NYC, something like this is orthogonal to the issue of superblocks; most people already aren't using cars to escape the warmth anyway, so if this kind of solution were necessary it would've already been made, with superblocks having little effect.
Why is it considered progress to go back to how urban life was several centuries ago? Peter Thiel is right; we used to be optimistic about the future being better than today.
Just because something is newer doesn't mean it is automatically better. Regression is just as possible as progression.
There's a difference in quality of life between human-focused cities and transport-focused cities. People who have experienced both tend to prefer the former. Why do you think that is?