Barcelona, Spain

Eixample

Despite densities higher than Manhattan, the City of Barcelona is managing to find space to create a mosaic of new green spaces and reintroduce natural systems in its existing urban fabric. Some of the solutions identified are also found in other proactive metropoles using green infrastructure to combat growing public health and resilience challenges created by air pollution, lack of physical activity and climate change. Other solutions, such as the superblocks, have little equivalent elsewhere in the world, and yet offer ample potential for replication.

Images by Gabino Carballo

Barcelona today remains in the top five cities in Europe for population density. However, it was in the mid-1850s that issues associated with high density and liveability first peaked. At the time, the city was growing at a faster pace than the rest of Spain but was still contained within its medieval walls. Into this came Ildefons Cerdà, a visionary engineer who conceived a large-scale, grid-based expansion plan that would unite the old city with seven peripheral villages, which later became integral Barcelona neighbourhoods. The united area was almost four times the size of the old city (which was around two square kilometres) and would come to be known as Eixample.

For Barcelona’s densest areas, such as the Eixample, success in increasing the presence of green infrastructure has primarily relied on three programmes – superblocks, green corridors, and reclaiming of inner-blocks.

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