Mobility in Barcelona: City Planning of the Future
The #nextvisions of urban pioneers
We sent podcast host and self-proclaimed “expert on everything” Markus Herrmann on a road trip across Europe to find out how cities embrace the future of urban space. In this episode, we’re in Barcelona, which is in the middle of a gigantic transformation. Aiming to become smarter, the city integrated so-called superblocks and installed sensors in the entire city.
Between imposing buildings and a vibrant creative scene, Barcelona’s streets wind their way as playfully and simultaneously organized like a dribble of Lionel Messi. Through ordered blocks, the city looks on the map like a pixel graphic, which is now gradually developing into a visionary city. The goal is to be an international pioneer of sustainable urban planning.
Barcelona is home to 1.6 million inhabitants
It’s is the capital of Catalonia and the second-largest city in Spain after Madrid
Since 2019, Barcelona is the seat of the European Sustainable Mobility Research Centre of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)
Subscription services instead of sharing
This is already noticeable in the most current of all mobility topics: E-scooters. While other metropolises are desperately searching for solutions among the mass of providers and devices to integrate them smartly into traffic and, above all, into the cityscape, in Barcelona, the search is almost in vain. At least on the pedestrian route. Yet you see them often enough on the streets. The reason for this is GOMEEP, a monthly subscription model for e-scooters. Thus, the e-scooters are not rented by the minute but delivered to the front door for a monthly fee and become a permanent companion in the traffic. An interesting project, which is currently only available in Barcelona. However, long waiting lists for new customers suggest rapid growth and new cities in the near future.
Much older and more deeply anchored in the image of urban mobility are the bicycles of the municipal bike-sharing provider Bicing. In 2007, after careful study of the Lyon model Vélo’v, the company developed its own model, which now comprises 6000 bikes at over 400 stations. In addition, the fleet is constantly being expanded by now over 800 e-bikes. However good and comprehensive the bike-sharing system may be, it is unfortunately not accessible to tourists. To use it, you need a membership card, which is available for an annual fee and is only sent to addresses in Spain. For tourists, therefore, the service of Donkey Republic, which offers numerous bikes according to the pay-as-you-use principle, is more suitable.
In contrast to many other metropolises, Barcelona has only one provider for sharing e-scooters: Reby.
In terms of bike-sharing, it looks similar, here the bikes of Donkey Republic can be found in the city area.
If you want to explore the city on a scooter, it’s best to use the app YEGO.
Barcelona’s taxis have a number display next to the taxi sign on the roof, which indicates the tariff of time. The green light on the roof shows if a taxi is free.
In terms of mobility, Barcelona has one trump card that almost no other metropolis has to offer: a cable car! With the Telefèric de Montjuic, one gets to the local mountain Montjuic and enjoys the view over the whole city.
Barcelona unites tradition with future-proof concepts
If you move through the many alleys of the capital of Catalonia, in many places you quickly feel how deeply rooted tradition meets the ideas of a future-oriented Smart City. As a further milestone in this development, Barcelona recently prevailed over 12 other cities and, as of this year, is the seat of a new research center of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The aim of the new research center is to design sustainable and innovative mobility concepts to create more liveable and environmentally friendly cities.
Barcelona is also working on different ways to achieve these goals. The world’s best-known example is the Superblocks, a concept from the Urban Mobility Plan of Barcelona. The Superblocks (“Superilles” in Catalan) are the combination of different apartment blocks that are connected to form a traffic-calmed area. Only delivery traffic and residents are allowed to drive on the streets within the blocks at walking speed. The result is much more liveable streets where pedestrians have priority and on top of that, a new sense of community is created among the residents. The current five superblocks will one day become as many as 500, which would mean that almost 70 percent of Barcelona’s streets would be used by a mixture of people.
Other architectural features can be seen in District 22@. As early as 2000, an initiative was set up in the El Poblenou district, the aim of which is to take up the city’s industrial past and create new space for innovation in the numerous old buildings. In this way, symbolic industrial monuments were preserved on more than 200 hectares and became the home of educational and research institutions, start-ups and leading tech companies. Strolling through 22@, you will find this unique blend of industrial past and modern think tanks at almost every corner.
But Barcelona’s constant transformation into a showcase Smart City is not only visible on the outside, but also on the digital level. For example, there are well over 12,000 sensors throughout the city that collect weather and traffic data as well as information on air quality or the fill level of the city’s waste containers. All these data streams converge on the open-source platform Sentilo and can be used from there to make the cityscape smarter. Be it in various apps, for traffic guidance or for the route of the municipal refuse trucks. In any case, it will continue to be exciting to follow the future-oriented development between tiny sensors and huge superblocks. Oh yes, by the way, there are still miles of sandy beaches.
Barcelona has one of the largest publicly accessible Wifi networks in Europe, which is easily accessible in large parts of the city.
The most visited of Barcelona’s many museums is not the Picasso Museum, but the Football Museum in Camp Nou. Those who always wanted to walk from the cabins to the place of Europe’s biggest football stadium can do this during a guided tour. Due to the high demand, online pre-booking is recommended.
Those who are looking for some more green during the city trip will find enough relaxation in the Parc de la Ciutadella, the Parc Güell or on Barcelona’s local mountain, the Montjuïc, that is also called the “green lung of the city”.
More stories about mobility in Europe:
Markus Herrmann is a blogger, author, and member of the successful podcast “Gästeliste Geisterbahn”. For Porsche, he is testing the mobility level of the Back 2 Tape metropolises in Europe.
The project “Back 2 Tape” is a cooperation between the Porsche Newsroom and music journalist Niko Backspin. It follows the tracks of hip hop in Europe. All further information on this project can be found in the Porsche Newsroom.
An important note: Markus’ trip through Europe as well as “Back 2 Tape” were produced before the outbreak of COVID-19. Porsche, Backspin and the involved agencies and artists are aware of their social responsibility and advise against such a trip at this time out of consideration for the health and well-being of all people.
