Redesigning Bengaluru: Lessons from Barcelona

Many Indian cities are a mess – roads choked with traffic, air thick with smog, waste on the streets, and shrinking public spaces. The pandemic was a wake-up call for many cities across the world. The polluted waters of the Yamuna in Delhi recovered, and even Bellandur Lake was froth-free, showing us just how fast urban ecosystems can recover when human pressure is released. But we seem to have quickly forgotten these lessons.

Barcelona, in Spain’s Catalonian region, is one of Europe’s best-known cities. Barcelona’s modern urban form was shaped by the 19th century architect Ildefons Cerdà, who coined the term ‘urbanisation’. Cerdà designed central Barcelona, the Eixample, as a series of short blocks connected by gridded roads, to shape an egalitarian and accessible city as a series of micro-neighbourhoods. But by the early 21st century, 60% of the road space was occupied by private cars, increasing noise and air pollution, making the city unlivable.

As early as 1987, urban planners started thinking about a plan to redesign Barcelona, using the idea of superblocks – 3-by-3 sections of nine blocks, 400-by-400 metres in size, occupied by 5,000-6,000 people. The plan was to treat a superblock as a self-contained unit, with its unique cultural character -- including art, design, public spaces, waste management, ecology, hydrology and traffic management.

These ideas received a boost under Ada Colau Ballano, the visionary Mayor of Barcelona from 2015-2023, who was very concerned about the dangers of climate change. With her support, the municipality began to take over sections of high-traffic roads, starting with low-cost approaches such as painting additional cycle and pedestrian lanes, and reducing the space for cars from six lanes to three. This met with considerable opposition from commercial interests, but the residents loved it. Then, the planners added more.

I walked around the streets of Barcelona last week, with Frederic Ximeno Roca, Director of Climate Action of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona and the former Executive Director of Environment and Urban Services of Barcelona City. Ximeno showed me many initiatives they have implemented, such as biodiversity parks and children’s play areas that now occupy a street that used to be full of cars.

Cars have not been banned completely. Residents, shops and restaurants in the area do need access. However, motorised vehicles can only access small sections of the city centre, and at very low speeds, effectively discouraging people from using cars unless essential. We saw people sitting in chairs in the middle of the road, walking babies in prams, taking grandparents for a stroll in wheelchairs, teenagers kicking a ball around, dogs gambolling, leash-free, in dog parks, and innovative local art installations at road intersections – all in the heart of the city.

Barecelona’s innovation in planning goes hand in hand with research experiments that are closely monitored. Pigeons, whose populations have exploded over the years, are being controlled by using food laced with hormones. Small pollinator parks have been set up at intersections, with ‘insect hotels’ – logs with holes, which insects have begun to use. These parks are undulating, designed to capture rainwater and send it to underground filtration tanks – Barcelona has a water crisis, and every drop of water is important. Using door-to-door waste collection, the city has significantly increased the amount of waste recycled. New tree species, selected for climate tolerance, have been planted to increase biodiversity and resilience to urban stress. The level of thought that has gone into every tiny detail is impressive -- from the cultural and artistic aspects to research on ecology and hydrology, and even on human behaviour and the use of play spaces by children.

Barcelona has hundreds of employees working on urban design, hydrology, waste management, biodiversity, gardening, public spaces -- all from an ecological perspective. Yes, Barcelona has resources that Bengaluru cannot match, but it’s not just about money. Barcelona’s urban planners and designers started with low-cost approaches, and have worked experimentally and adaptively, integrating local research for local planning, keeping considerations of equity and justice at the forefront. Bengaluru has much to learn from cities like Barcelona, and from environmental urbanist experts like Ximeno.