Carme Miralles-Guasch cites El Periódico in a city block interior recovered for public use. In just over 30 metres, you go from asphalt to green, from cars to children playing. This is how Ildefons Cerdà designed these spaces, but the perversion of the times made it impossible.
Why have you summoned us here?
It is a site that tells us about the Barcelona that could not be and that we are recovering.
Do you think so?
It is the moment in which we have more block interiors. Surely they are not enough and that it could have been done more quickly, but the management of these spaces should not be easy because their owners have names and surnames. These places are the example of what we have to recover: the public space in which there is no room for road traffic.
We’re on that?
Cities go through very similar stages. Faster or slower, they all have the same trajectory. When it is decided to build urban highways, they all do. George-Eugène Haussmann designed the great avenues of Paris in the 19th century and everyone followed suit. He went from the medieval plot to the urban one, with trees, creating different speeds, with wide sidewalks. All times have their paradigm. The twentieth century is modernity, the private car. A functionalism that created cities with separate spaces and activities: living, shopping, working, leisure. That did a lot of damage, consumed a lot of territory. And a lot of energy because of traveling by private car.
A perfect gear for the automotive industry
It was a paradigm that everyone tried to imitate. Paris is the example of the 19th century, and Los Angeles is surely the best example of the 20th century. The United States is the symbol of this type of mobility linked to a certain urbanism.
What is the model city of the XXI?
I think it’s Paris again. It has been able to adapt like no other to the new paradigm, that of sustainability.
How did you do it?
Adapting public space and changing the predominant means of transport. The number of bikes there is very considerable, and this has come hand in hand with a change in the configuration of urban space. And then there is the city of 15 minutes.
“Barcelona is in a moment of change, but transformations cannot be expected from today to tomorrow”
Isn’t that a bit of a catchphrase? Couldn’t we say that Barcelona, in fact, already was?
Sure, but Paris has had the grace and wisdom to sum it up in five words. Barcelona is already a city of proximity. to walk everywhere.
What time is our city?
It is in a very interesting moment of change that also creates a lot of debate. If there was no debate it would mean that nothing moves. There are new priorities, but transformations cannot be expected from today to tomorrow. Ten years may seem like an eternity to us (it is the deadline set for the 21 green axes), but they are nothing for a city that is 2,000 years old. Changes happen slowly. But they will come.
Depends on who’s in charge, right?
Cities evolve at their own pace, but share the same path. The partisan debate can generate momentary stops, but sooner or later, they all move towards a model in which private transport loses prominence, bicycles are generalized and the air is much cleaner than it is now. The bike has taken a fundamental leap. It was a vehicle for the poor and today it is used by social groups that generate public opinion. And why now? Because fossil energy is running out and that forces a change in transportation. Changes can be delayed, but not avoided. The cities that do not bet on the bike will be failed cities. If they aren’t already.
Why?
Because they will not be able to maintain the mobility systems. A noisy city in which the car is the protagonist has no quality of life.
Is there a mobility of the left and a mobility of the right?
Yes. Urban models have a political color. But all cities are going towards the same models.
Is there unanimity in the academic world?
Total. Now yes. The ideas about the recovery of urban space are consolidated, because science, data, also go in that direction. The most congested cities are the ones with the most road infrastructure, that is what needs to be corrected.
“The partisan debate can generate momentary stops, but sooner or later, all cities move towards a model in which private transport loses prominence”
It’s not easy to leave the car…
Yes… Habits linked to mobility are difficult to change. Each means of transport has its easements, and the car is the rush hour: understand that at 8 in the morning, in very crowded spaces, travel time increases. What you would do in 10 minutes takes three quarters of an hour.
Why is it so difficult to bet on intermodality, as the rest of Europe does?
We have a very fragmented territorial governance. The urban reality surpasses the municipalities of the metropolitan area. But how many organizations manage public transport? The municipalities, the county councils, the Autoritat del Transport Metropolità, the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, the Generalitat…. Then add the Rodalies de Renfe, the private companies, the ‘sharing’. Progress was made with tariff integration, but much remains to be done.
Has the pandemic been of any use in terms of urban planning?
We have had some interesting change of habits, but no revolution. Yes, it is true that walking around the city has been vindicated and that we have incorporated more walking in our day to day.
What do you think of tactical urbanism?
It is nothing more than a change in the use of public space, placing the least polluting means of transport at the center, so that being there, and not passing by, is a priority. Terraces instead of car parks, for example. The tables are an economic activity and a social meeting place. A parking area is nothing. We will agree that the ‘new jersey’ are ugly, but the issue is not about aesthetics. It is about providing security and supporting the restoration.
Does it make sense for us to continue parking on the street?
None. Do you hang clothes on the sidewalk? Well the same. It is a drag of modernity. We should also manage the issue of motorcycles, which continue to occupy a space on the sidewalks that is not theirs.
“The pandemic has generated some interesting change in habits, but it has not brought about any revolution”
Mobility has become highly politicized. Are you afraid of being pigeonholed?
No. Because what I am explaining to you is something that happens in cities all over the world. Look, 20 years ago, an interview they did with me was entitled ‘Direct to collapse’. Nor do I say anything now that I did not say decades ago.
And where do we go now direct?
I know where we should go, towards the highest quality of life for the citizen. Stress and pollution are not inherent facts of cities as many people take for granted.
Why is it so hard to assimilate things that seem like common sense?
Because there are private interests, lobis, pressure groups. In 1907 the first buses began to circulate in Barcelona. The tram ran them out of town. Did they stop…? No. They just delayed their arrival. Then it was the car that kicked out the streetcar. Space is finite and that is the real political debate: what do we want to dedicate it to?
Are we doing well with the green axes plan?
I don’t know what they are. The debate is not this, it is not the axis. The center of the debate is what and who we prioritize in the public space.
Green city better?
That is.
Do you miss that experts are consulted more?
Yes. And in the media too. This is science; the city are figures and academic reflections. Our opinions are based on data: when we measure pollution, the average daily intensity of vehicles, noise… What we say is not a whim or a perception.
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Do your students believe in that ability to change?
They think that cities do not change, that it is impossible to remove cars. It is very recurring. I tell them to talk to their grandparents so they can tell them what the city was like when they were their age. Many things are different, why now do they see it as impossible? They lack historical perspective, and they must understand that they are the agents of that change. That still overwhelms them a little more (laughs…). They are the future.