Cities & Health

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Equity concerns in transformative planning:

Barcelona’s Superblocks under scrutiny

Isabelle Anguelovski, Jordi Honey-Rosés & Oriol Marquet

To cite this article: Isabelle Anguelovski, Jordi Honey-Rosés & Oriol Marquet (2023) Equity
concerns in transformative planning: Barcelona’s Superblocks under scrutiny, Cities & Health,
7:6, 950-958, DOI: 10.1080/23748834.2023.2207929

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2023.2207929

Published online: 26 May 2023.

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CITIES & HEALTH
2023, VOL. 7, NO. 6, 950–958
https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2023.2207929

COMMENTARY AND DEBATE

Equity concerns in transformative planning: Barcelona’s Superblocks under

scrutiny
a,b,c a,d a,c
Isabelle Anguelovski , Jordi Honey-Rosés and Oriol Marquet
a
Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain; bInstitució
Catala de Rerca i Estudis Avancats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain; cDepartment de Geogràfia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Cerdanyola
del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain; dInstitute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

RESUMEN ARTICLE HISTORY

La planificación transformadora reestructura radicalmente los usos del suelo urbano, los Received 19 January 2023
diseños y los paisajes urbanos para responder al cambio climático y mejorar la salud y la Accepted 24 April 2023
calidad de vida de la ciudadanía. Examinamos cómo la planificación transformadora puede PALABRAS CLAVE
perder de vista a cuestiones relacionadas con la equidad, apoyándonos en el ejemplo del plan Planificación transformadora;
transformador de Barcelona para implementar Supermanzanas (Superblocks in English, Supermanzanas; equidad
Superilles in Catalan). Argumentamos que las preguntas sobre la equidad distributiva y
relacional, incluida la evaluación y priorización de necesidades impulsadas por la equidad KEYWORDS
interseccional; beneficios o cargas locales espacializados; objetivos de justicia de movilidad; la Transformative planning;
Superblocks; equity
exclusión y la gentrificación verde, junto con la equidad procesal, deben ocupar un lugar
destacado en la agenda de la planificación transformadora para lograr la justicia urbana
verdadera. También pueden implicar trade-offs claves entre abordar las vulnerabilidades
sociales y ambientales.
ABSTRACT
Transformative planning radically restructures urban land uses, designs, and streetscapes to
respond to climate change and improve residents’ health and quality of life. We examine how
transformative planning may overlook critical questions related to equity relying on the
example from Barcelona’s transformative plan to implement Superblocks. We argue that
questions about distributional and relational equity, including intersectional equity-driven
needs assessment and prioritization; spatialized local benefits or burdens; mobility justice
goals; exclusion and green gentrification, together with procedural equity, must be high on
the agenda for transformative planning to achieve urban justice for all. They may also involve
key trade-offs between addressing social and environmental vulnerabilities.

Introduction Rosés et al. 2021, Glaser and Krizek 2021, Rojas-Rueda

Cities around the world are looking for transformative
planning strategies to radically rework urban land use
and streetscapes in response to the climate crisis.
Transformative strategies are ambitious, operate at
the city scale, and target multiple issues including
mobility, health, social justice and climate change
adaptation (Zografos et al. 2020, Bulkeley 2021).
They often entail major re-designs to street networks
and the creation of new public spaces. Among these
transformative initiatives, we find the 15-minute city
project (Paris, Melbourne), the low traffic neighbor­
hoods (London), or the Superblock projects
(Barcelona, Vienna). All have created pedestrian-
oriented streetscapes that aim to catalyze change that
can reverberate throughout the city. These transfor­
mative strategies are attracting attention, especially in
the aftermath of the pandemic in which tactical inter­
ventions have transformed public space and allowed
us to re-imagine what cities could look like (Honey-
and Morales-Zamora 2021, Honey-Rosés 2022).
While transformative planning aims to reorganize
power dynamics and decision-making, in practice
these plans are contentious, entangled in top-down
planning procedures, under the influence of entrenched
interests, and often unable to create the inclusive and
democratic spaces promised. Even the most celebrated
examples of transformative urbanism still leave basic
questions about equity unanswered. Here we outline
the critical questions that need interrogation when
assessing transformative urban planning. We use
Barcelona’s Superblocks as our entry point. Many of
these questions are not new but are worth highlighting
because they remain overlooked and have been raised
by analysts and critics of the Superblocks and related
transformational interventions. We argue here that
questions about distributional and relational equity in
terms of benefits, access, exclusion, and green gentrifi­
cation as well as procedural equity in terms of partici­
pation and community outreach need to be high on the

CONTACT Isabelle Anguelovski Isabelle.Anguelovski@uab.cat Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Casa Convalescencia, Institute of
Environmental Sciences and Technology, C/ Sant Antoni Maria Claret, 171, CC/311 08041 Barcelona
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

agenda to ensure that transformative planning achieves
urban and climate justice for everyone.
Barcelona’s Superblocks as an experiment in
transformative planning
Barcelona Superblocks are a traffic management and
urban design strategy that prioritizes pedestrians over
vehicle traffic with the aim of improving environmen­
tal quality and livability for neighborhood units.
Barcelona’s Superblock program has received interna­
tional acclaim as a bold move to re-organize public
space and mobility networks (O'Sullivan 2017).
International headlines such as ‘Barcelona’s radical
plan to take back streets from cars’ emphasize the
ambitious scale of the initiative (Roberts 2019).
Barcelona’s archetype Superblock entails nine city
blocks, in which traffic is diverted in and away from the
center block, thereby transforming four vehicular intersec­
tions into four public plazas. The neighborhood is pedes­
trianized and through traffic is pushed to the surrounding
arterial streets (Rueda 2019). By eliminating through traf­
fic, the Superblock design aims to decrease noise and air
pollution, convert car-centered street spaces into green and
walkable streets, while strengthening public transit and
cycling infrastructure (Figure 1).
As laid out in the early 2010s, the Superblock pro­
gram proposed a radically new way of organizing the
city’s transportation network, that marked clear
departure from the past (Honey-Rosés 2023).
Transportation networks have a huge impact on the
urban social fabric, acting both as a generator of
Figure 1. The original superblock model (implemented in Poblenou and Sant Antoni). Source: Ajuntament de Barcelona (City of
Barcelona).
CITIES & HEALTH 951
inequalities and a catalyzer of existent spatial injus­
tices. Increased barriers to car-travel within the city in
the form of less dedicated space, fewer parking, and
less direct routes may motivate drivers to choose alter­
native travel modes. The expected improvement in air
quality and sustainability indicators comes from the
shifts to active travel and reduced car use. The
Superblock model also shares end goals with
a broader 15-minute vision for Barcelona (Ferrer-
Ortiz et al. 2022, Vich et al. 2022).
Prior to the implementation of the first pilot
Superblock in Poblenou in 2016, the city began to
brand pedestrianization initiatives in other neighbor­
hoods as part of the Superblock program, creating con­
fusion between the Superblock city model and other
street calming projects1. What is interesting about the
Superblock archetype is that it is a scalable urban model
that can be applied in any grid network, of which there
are many around the world (Eggimann 2022). And given
the capacity of transportation networks to lock-in in
future urban development and behaviors, the transfor­
mation potential is quite large.
While Barcelona’s Superblocks are praised as an
example of transformative urban change and bold
response to climate impacts (Zografos et al. 2020), its
implementation has come with controversy. In what
follows, we use Barcelona’s Superblock experience to
examine the equity dimensions of transformative
planning and the associated controversies involved in
implementing radical urban change. We outline core
questions that should be considered when assessing
the equity dimensions of transformative planning
(Figure 2).
952 I. A. ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.
Figure 2. Assessing the equity dimensions of transformative planning.
Equity questions for transformative planning
(1) Is transformative planning targeting the neigh­
borhoods that need it the most?
The most obvious question asks if transformational
urban change is targeting the neighborhoods most
vulnerable to negative environmental conditions and
in need of pedestrianization, greater access to public
space, and overall improvement in environmental
conditions.
In Barcelona, the original Superblock plan outlined
a vision for 503 Superblocks throughout the city,
creating equalizing and redistributive benefits in all
districts (Zografos et al. 2020, Eggimann 2022).
Equality was meant to supercede equity, that is to
ensure that all residents could be living in proximity
to a Superblock rather than a prioritization of some
areas over others because of specific needs. In practice,
the Superblock began with a pilot in the Poblenou
neighborhood in 2016, followed by another in Sant
Antoni in 2018. While both projects have received
abundant attention, the Superblock model has not
been scaled to its original ambition, demonstrating
the financial, administrative, and practical difficulty
in implementing such ambitious change.
The pilot Superblocks sites were chosen out of
convenience, and to minimize interruptions to city
traffic. Thus, social and environmental equity consid­
erations were not part of the site selection process, as
field research and interviews we conducted in 2017
(Zografos et al. 2020), just after the initial Superblock
deployment in 2016, revealed. The intervention was
not seen as a way to redress inequities, but rather as
a marketable and flagship program that needed to be
implemented on a site where it was most likely to be
successful. As an innovative and risky urban transfor­
mation, success was defined by neighborhood and
political acceptance, rather than measurable improve­
ments in environmental quality. This led city planners
to select the less densely populated Poblenou neigh­
borhood as the location for the first Superblock fol­
lowed by Sant Antoni. For the more recent
Superblocks (e.g. Green Axes, Eixos Verds in
Catalan) however, public space needs and contamina­
tion levels became greater selection criteria, although
without a consideration of intersecting neighborhood
social or housing vulnerability, as more recent inter­
views we conducted in 2022 confirmed: ‘We are not
working on social aspects, this is not our domain. We
don’t have any impact on the conditions of
a neighborhood with low socio-economic status
through our work on, mmh, public space. Our impact
on these aspects is very relative. However, if they have
some public space deficit, we can intervene, yes. Or if
they are contaminated (municipal technician, 2023)’.
Looking specifically at baseline air and noise qual­
ity conditions, the two pilot sites of Poblenou and
Sant Antoni presented contrasting realities. The Sant
Antoni site had worse air and noise pollution levels
while the Poblenou site was less populated and pol­
luted. Evaluating those Superblocks in 2021, the
Barcelona Public Health Agency reported that NO2
concentrations in Sant Antoni decreased by 25% at
the central Superblock intersection (Agéncia de Salut
Pública de Barcelona 2021). Furthermore, sound

measurements at the Sant Antoni site showed that
noise at night has decreased in some months and
increased in others, but overall has remained at simi­
lar levels (Agéncia de Salut Pública de Barcelona
2021). Thus, the Sant Antoni Superblock seems to
have made progress in addressing air pollution while
noise levels remain unchanged. Much of this noise
now originates in the new street life and commercial
activities (e.g. restaurant outdoor dining) replacing
car traffic.
In terms of access to green and public space, the
new green areas of Sant Antoni have become a well-
used asset, by providing new local green and public
areas for Sant Antoni families and elderly residents, as
well as immigrant families living in the nearby Raval.
Although Sant Antoni is relatively close to the
Montjuic hill, topography had restrained real access
to this large green space for elderly groups and families
with children. As for Poblenou, prior to the
Superblock, residents already had access to the Parc
del Centre and the waterfront, so the green gain is
more limited.
If one considers intersectional social and racialized
needs and vulnerabilities in Barcelona, the
Superblocks are not located in priority neighborhoods
with (a) high numbers of working class, immigrant
and migrant residents, (b) little and difficult access to
proximate green spaces, and (c) high air and noise
pollution exposure. For example, the peripheral areas
of Nou Barris and Sant Andreu and the area around El
Clot remain excluded from the Superblocks, even
though they have benefit from the greening of major
urban arterials such as La Meridiana or the highways
surrounding the city.
In short, social equity concerns have not played
a role in the selection of initial Superblock sites.
Without explicitly incorporating intersectional equity
concerns in transformational projects, these projects
risk amplifying existing inequities.
(2) Do transformational projects shift burdens to
other sites and neighborhoods?
Transformational projects risk burden shifting
between sites and neighborhoods. Are the streets,
buildings, and public spaces directly within the
Superblocks harnessing greater environmental and
social benefits in comparison to those just outside
their borders? While transformational projects aim
to improve the entire city, there may be spatial inequi­
ties at some scales. The original Superblock plan envi­
sioned traffic reduction through the majority of streets
in the city grid, with some streets remaining as arter­
ials. In addition to this structural inequity, the plan’s
partial implementation, with only a few Superblocks
being built, may also have pushed traffic flows to
surrounding streets or specific areas.
CITIES & HEALTH 953
Earlier on in the implementation stage, in 2019
10,300 vehicles were found to have transited through
the Vidadomat street, a 20% increase before the traffic
calming intervention in 2017. Sant Antoni residents
also reported greater risk perception of traffic acci­
dents in streets that surround the Superblock such as
Viladomat, an arterial outside the Sant Antoni
Superblock (Agéncia de Salut Pública de Barcelona
2021). However more recent health and traffic studies
have shown that, while traffic and noise increased in
some streets over the short term, traffic evaporation
dynamics may now be taking hold at a neighborhood
scale. When analyzing traffic intensity before and after
the Superblock and other traffic calming strategies
throughout all the Eixample, the most recent study
from 2022 estimates that traffic levels on intervened
streets have decreased by 15% while those in adjacent
parallel streets have seen insignificant changes or only
0.7% increase. Streets in the wider vicinity have experi­
enced an average 0.9% decrease in traffic (Nello-
Deakin 2022).
It is thus worth noting that the traffic reduction
achieved on intervened streets did not lead to
a redistribution of traffic to adjacent streets, rather,
some of the traffic seems to have disappeared, poten­
tially as a result of drivers choosing other modes of
transport or outer-neighborhood routes. These more
mid-term dynamics suggest that once implementa­
tions are scaled, one could see major reductions in
traffic volume. In short, transformational projects
must examine impacts at the city scale with particular
attention to rebound effects and burden shifting.
However, it is still early to assess the full scope of
possible rebound effects and burden shifting versus
wider, mid-term gains due to the Superblocks inter­
vention.
(3) Are transformational projects helping achieve
mobility equity and justice?
Mobility justice refers to people’s safety, wellness, and
positive experience while being and traveling on the
streets and well as their ability to move joyfully and
fearlessly (America Walks 2023). From a travel beha­
vior standpoint, the Superblocks aim to trigger
changes in ways that will reduce car use, lower emis­
sions, and increase active transit. Negative impacts of
motorized transport are usually unevenly distributed,
with the health of socially vulnerable, working class,
racialized and immigrant, communities disproportio­
nately affected by transport-related externalities (Josey
et al. 2023). One would thus expect that transforma­
tive interventions aimed at improving mobility be also
directed towards redressing those impacts and benefit
these same groups (Aldred et al. 2021).
Looking at travel behavior, we observe that
Superblocks have increased accessibility levels and
954 I. A. ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.
active travel infrastructure in already high accessible
areas. The Sant Antoni Superblock is located in
a highly walkable and accessible site, that in fact is
within the 100th percentile for accessibility (Vich et al.
2022) and is inhabited by high and middle class groups
with no specific mobility issues beyond a general age­
ing (Ferrer-Ortiz et al. 2022). In contrast, the mobility
needs of essential, working-class workers who live
disproportionately in peripheral areas and commute
longer distances (Anguelovski et al. 2022) remain
unmet or unaddressed by Barcelona’s Superblocks.
The program has thus been unable to generate a city-
wide change of conditions and address complex mobi­
lity equity needs in Barcelona’s historically margin­
alized neighborhoods. Here we see that while the
Superblocks project goals are noble, the urban design
changes will likely have limited impacts on travel
behavior especially among socially vulnerable popula­
tion groups.
In terms of social transport disadvantages, women
and seniors are also among the most likely to suffer
from car-oriented environments (Marquet and
Miralles-Guasch 2014). The Superblocks in their cur­
rent state of development have certainly brought some
local improvements in that regard. The creation of
new and valuable open spaces segregated from car
traffic has also provided some much-needed safe socia­
lization and resting public spaces. Among the most
benefitted groups are indeed seniors, for whom high
quality urban spaces are essential as a place to socialize
and get out of home (Akinci et al. 2022), and women
with children who are among the population groups
with more complex travel strategies and the more
frequent users of proximity trips and reliant on active
transportation (Maciejewska and Miralles-Guasch
2020). In that regard, the Superblock in Sant Antoni
is particularly well used and appreciated by elderly
residents. Improving the infrastructure for active tra­
vel and public meetings will thus have a direct impact
over quality of life of these groups, helping to bring
balance in current mobility inequalities.
However, in other areas, immigrant, and/or even
elderly people might not feel comfortable spending
time in newly renovated public spaces and streets if
they feel they do not socio-culturally belong in them,
do not feel welcomed, or if they feel in ‘competition’ with
active travel users. For example the elderly have reported
a sense of isolation in the Poblenou Superblock (Agència
de Salut Pública de Barcelona 2021), raising concerns
about relational justice.
(4) Is transformational planning playing a role in
green gentrification?
The gentrification potential of transformative planning
has been well documented around the world (Curran
and Hamilton 2017, Gould and Lewis 2017). Projects
with the best of intentions are not immune to market
dynamics and land speculation that may burden or dis­
place local residents. Some of the equity concerns sur­
rounding the Superblocks relate to whether they are
building secluded islands of environmental privilege
through associated gentrification and other exclusionary
development dynamics. Green gentrification refers to
how urban greening agendas contribute to demographic
change and increased housing prices that displace work­
ing-class and racialized groups from recently greened
areas. When considering spillover effects besides vehicle-
traffic levels, quantitative and spatial research conducted
in Barcelona has already shown accelerating city-wide
green gentrification trends throughout the last two dec­
ades, especially due to parks and greenways (Anguelovski
et al. 2022, Triguero-Mas et al. 2022). Barcelona’s urban
greening and branding agendas have positioned the city
as a global leader in climate-responsive agendas through
the re-naturing of urban spaces and the elimination of
car dominance in the city (Kotsila et al. 2021). This
agenda makes Barcelona an attractive city for the arrival
of so-called expat workers, international firms, and inter­
national real estate investments, thus accelerating gentri­
fication (Cocola-Gant and Lopez-Gay 2020).
Residents surveyed in the Superblocks, especially
school-age families surveyed in the vicinity of the new
infrastructure as well as housing-rights civic groups (i.e.
Observatori dels Barris de Poblenou; La Flor de Maig),
report fear of displacement as a result of the urban
greening agenda and relate this displacement to the
attractiveness and the branding of the Superblock
(Oscilowicz et al. 2020, Planas-Carbonell et al. 2022).
While most residents and families value the environ­
mental, climate, and social benefits of low-traffic streets
and green spaces, they share experiences and percep­
tions of physical and socio-cultural displacement and
are anxious about the future. They also regret that most
new real estate developments built around the
Superblocks, such as IT/design office buildings, luxury
condos, and hotels are targeting high-income residents
and digital nomads rather the district’s long-term resi­
dents. A member of a housing association in Poblenou
(2021) shared: ‘there is no question that the area around
Cristóbal de Moura is nicer than before, but the ques­
tion is: why is it nicer, and most importantly, for
whom?’ (Interview 2021). Cristóbal de Moura is
a green, climate-resilient street redeveloped in the vici­
nity of the Poblenou Superilla, which has seen new
high-end buildings pop up since the late 2010s.
The City of Barcelona is aware of these risks and is
working to mitigate them through new social housing
within the Superblocks and other measures meant to
mitigate or prevent gentrification. In Poblenou, for
example, the city has invested in the construction of 18
protected units at the intersection of Ciutat de Granada
and Almogàvers. Overall, the city has invested in the
construction of 2,300 units of such units throughout

the entire Sant Martí district where Poblenou is located.
The municipality also has a social housing rule in place,
through which 30% of newly built units in Barcelona
should be reserved for this type of housing. It is still
unclear if these housing strategies will be enough to
avoid the displacement of working and middle class
residents living in the vicinity of the Superblocks, but
the current municipal team is clearly working to prior­
itize housing justice in the Superblocks and beyond.
(5) Is transformational planning contributing to
a different model of civic participation?
A final question relates to procedural equity. Here, the
Superblocks must be examined in relation to whether
and how residents have been involved in assessing
needs and (co)designing and (co)using the space.
The location of the original Superblock in
Poblenou, was selected based on the relative low
number of people that lived there and the low
number of vehicles potentially impacted by the
traffic re-design. A first pilot project stage included
a participatory process engaging with academics,
design professionals and also local neighborhood
associations. The process was led a centralized
manner by the Agència d’Ecologia Urbana (Urban
Ecology Agency) in collaboration with the
Confederació de Tallers de Projectes
d’Arquitectura (Confederation of Architecture
Projects Workshops), that is not by the municipal­
ity itself but by expert groups. Those included the
use of online tools such as maps and surveys to
gather input and feedback (Guijarro Turégano
2022) and involved working groups made up of
local residents, businesses, and community organi­
zations, which were on paper responsible for devel­
oping specific aspects of the project. However,
critics argue that these participation processes
were minimal, not supporting the final street selec­
tion, purely information sharing-focused, and lim­
ited to what was required by law. They did not
involve a true co-design process or any deliberative
process. Overall some residents regret that the
municipality blundered the implementation by
changing the nine block site last minute, just
weeks before the first pilot was deployed and by
choosing streets with little traffic and affected resi­
dents (Zografos et al. 2020, Guijarro Turégano
2022). In contrast, the construction of the Sant
Antoni Superblock involved a stronger and earlier
communication process with groups of neighbors,
civic associations, and families, and the final pro­
ject was more well received. The Sant Antoni
Superblock project also benefited from a timely
renovation of the neighboring historic Sant
Antoni public market, which greatly improved the
CITIES & HEALTH 955
quality of the public space and synergized well with
the Superblock objectives.
In 2021 the City embarked on a new participatory
process using its online public engagement platform
Decidim (‘We decide’), to discuss the reformulation
of the Superblock initiative. This process brings
together civic groups and associations working
together with city staff to collaboratively diagnose
public space needs and organize charettes designed
to harness residents’ proposals for specific interven­
tions. As of early 2023, civic groups and agencies such
as Home Help Service (Servei d’Ajuda a Dominici)
are also working to help residents and associations
better appropriate the Superblocks for themselves
through the vision of ‘Superblocks of Care’, putting
emphasis on the need to support social relations and
care activities in and around the new public spaces
built in the Superblocks. An evaluation of these par­
ticipatory schemes is yet to be conducted. In the
future, the Climate Assembly created in Fall 2022
may serve as a novel yet untested approach to engage
with local reference groups around the future of the
Superblocks.
(6) Is the reconceptualization of the original form
and design of transformative projects addres­
sing equity concerns?
In March 2021 the city announced that the Superblock
program was pivoting away from the creation of
neighborhood units within nine city blocks and
instead focusing on the creation of Green Axes
(Eixos Verds) (City of Barcelona 2021)2(Figure 3).
While not explicit, the city essentially abandoned the
original nine Superblock archetype, but retained its
commitment to the core values of pedestrianized
spaces that inspired the Superblock idea in the first
place, creating considerable confusion within the city,
but also for international observers.
The new framing aspires to re-scale the original
nine block archetype for the entire city, meaning that
city planners aim to transform the entire Eixample
district into a pedestrianized space. In this sense,
they aspire for a Superblock Barcelona. Instead of
pushing traffic onto arterials the goal is that traffic
does not even enter the city.
The recent shift stems from a municipal vision to
reach more residents and neighborhoods rather than
creating what some municipal leaders have called
‘ghettos’ of privilege. The shape and extent of the
Green Axes is meant to spread the benefits of greening
throughout the city and avoid green gentrification. Yet
the planned green axes are predominately in middle to
higher-income neighborhoods of the Eixample dis­
trict, the area with some of the most acute air pollution
in Barcelona. The planned green streets, including
956 I. A. ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.
Figure 3. The revised green axes model. Source: Ajuntament de Barcelona (City of Barcelona).
Consell de Cent and Girona, will become highly desir­
able and attractive, while neighboring streets will
remain untouched and potentially carry more vehicle
traffic. Although the new L9 Metro line and local train
line connectors are meant to create incentives for
public transit and thus reduce car usage, those do
not address risks of green exclusion.
Broader questions of mobility justice also remain in
place. While the new bike and bus infrastructure
throughout the greened Eixample increases active
mobility options, they still do not target the mobility
needs of many working class residents, most of them
essential workers, who live in the peripheral neighbor­
hoods or Barcelona or even outside the city, and whose
longer-distance mobility needs exceed those of
a District wide mobility. Last, fears of green and com­
mercial gentrification are still being raised with the
axes model. While the city bought buildings in 2022
through the Eixample to convert them into protected
housing and is attempted to limit the opening of new
leisure venues and businesses along the greened ave­
nues, internal divisions within the local government
are leaving the final magnitude and impact of these
measures uncertain.
Conclusion
Several cities are proposing city-scale urban transfor­
mations that have the potential to address our climate
crisis while meeting health and social needs. While we
applaud the scale and scope of these efforts, key ques­
tions concerning who benefits from these projects
remain overlooked. Using Barcelona’s Superblock an
example of transformational urban change, we see that
the boosterism and international acclaim overlooks
this essential question.
Equity concerns have emerged from residents and
critics, with some conflicting equity considerations
between social and environmental vulnerabilities.
These considerations are particularly important in
a city like Barcelona where the worse air and noise
contamination is not only affecting lower-income
neighborhoods, that is traditional environmental justice
communities, but also middle-class neighborhoods.
Many questions remain open, complex to answer,
requiring longitudinal spatial, quantitative, and qualita­
tive data. Researchers are only starting to be able to
grasp some of the impacts of the Superblocks on
urban residents, public space use and access, climate
abatement, and sustainable and equitable mobility.
Our analysis raises important questions for research
and practice: Should short term inconveniences and
negative noise and air pollution impacts in some areas
be accepted for city-wide gain? How can we achieve
genuine intersectional mobility and green space justice?
Furthermore, there is a clear opportunity cost in invest­
ing political effort and capital in developing the
Superblocks in their current locations. In a city with
high accessibility levels such as Barcelona, the social
gains derived from increasing accessibility and public
space quality are small if these policies are not being
implemented strategically in places that need it most.
Barcelona’s Superblock model has evolved over
the last decade. A fragmented implementation of
the original Superblock model might produce
greater inequities. Switching to a system of green

protected axes on the other hand might have greater
equity benefits as those cover a larger swath of the
city and potentially benefit wider and more varied
population groups. However, the Green Axes
approach risks watering down the synergies of spa­
tially clustered neighborhood units found in the
original Superblocks, especially with regard to travel
behavior, transportation habit change, and new pub­
lic space. What is also potentially lost with the axes
approach is a truly transformational strategy, as well
as the capacity to significantly innovate from
a strategic planning perspective. The effect of the
intervention ends up being similar to conventional
street greening and pedestrianization, as many cities
around the globe are already doing.
A natural and recommended next step for the city is
to develop Superblocks in ways that can prioritize equity
so that socially vulnerable residents can be sure to benefit
from the transformative and tactical interventions, both
from a mobility and public space perspective and with
housing and real anti-estate speculation measures in
place. While the original Superblock idea envisioned
a sea of high-quality protected public spaces traversed
by selected traffic arteries, the implementation struggles
and controversy around the project might end up produ­
cing privileged green and protected axes traversing a sea
of business-as-usual car-dominated grid. Refined and
continued participatory models are also needed, through
the voices of more invisible or marginalized groups are
included in planning processes and where city planners
are able to account for their socio-ecological needs rather
than prioritize the vision of urban designers and
architects.
We also recognize that the full positive (and nega­
tive) impacts of such strategic transformations are still
to be fully assessed and account for mid-term and
long-term impacts – impacts that political cycles and
media tend to ignore by nature – and we call for a true
monitoring of each intervention alone and all inter­
ventions together. Here, it is important to measure
socio-ecological impacts at the local and city scale of
different superblock models as well as their replicabil­
ity. Health impact assessments as well as social equity
impact assessments are underway with the support of
the City of Barcelona and conducted by local research
centers and agency (e.g. Barcelona Public Health
Agency, ISGlobal, Institute for Environmental
Sciences and Technology-Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona), which demonstrates a strong commitment
to understanding the intersectional impacts and chal­
lenges the Superblock model.
Overall, when universal implementation of transfor­
mative urbanism is not possible, planners end up with
difficult tradeoffs, between spatial equity and travel beha­
vior change capacity and between environmental
improvements and social justice. The Barcelona
CITIES & HEALTH 957
experience demonstrates that ensuring equity principles
in transformative planning depends on our capacity to
implement interventions at the city-scale, throughout the
city grid, with special attention to underprivileged areas
with different spatial and socio-economic characteristics.
Deciding which trade-offs are most acceptable and just is
thus maybe one of the key challenges for future strategic
planning and climate justice.
Notes
1. Street calming and traffic management programs in
Horta, Les Corts and Gràcia were developed by the
Superblock program of the city, and labelled as such
but did not follow the complete conceptual model
envisioned. They entailed traffic re-direction but
were developed in old city street patterns and not in
a city grid. In this way, these early experiences share
more resemblance to classical street calming projects
that eliminated vehicle traffic in old city centers,
which has been seen throughout Europe since the
1980s. For our purposes here, these initial neighbor­
hood improvements did not follow the underlying
city model that defines the Superblocks in
Barcelona’s grid system and are not entirely compar­
able experiences.
2. https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the
author(s).
Funding
The work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia,
Innovación y Universidades [RYC2020-029441-I]; Ministerio
de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades [CEX2019-000940-
M]; Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades [RyC-
2019-027279-I].
Notes on contributors
Isabelle Anguelovski, Jordi-Honey Rosés, and Oriol
Marquet are urban planners and geographers at the
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Institute for
Environmental Sciences and Technology. They research
how to make cities healthier, green, proximate, and just
and how climate responses can better address these goals.
ORCID
Isabelle Anguelovski http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6409-
5155
Jordi Honey-Rosés http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0097-
1811
Oriol Marquet http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7346-5664
958 I. A. ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.
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