Ideas, strategies and projects that give rise to pilot projects. They tackle the challenges raised by the stakeholders involved and which are found in particular places in Barcelona or Medellín.
Something over a hundred years ago, Barcelona drafted a Plan of Interconnections. Is it feasible to evoke this plan when talking about the future of Barcelona? That depends. The projects presented here aim to show that at the meeting points of the districts in the real city there are often great tears ripping neighbourhoods apart. Under the weight of various egos lurks a great deal of secret admiration for the comfort of condominiums, of gated communities packed with prejudices!
In the course of four years and 24 workshops, we have identified seven working themes. We have done so in the only way we know: eagerly studying every case, aiming at a clear diagnosis and producing alternatives. They are approximate, delimited or evocative proposals that manifest latent opportunities to develop urban public space.
When, in 1903, Barcelona aspired to be a big city, the urban planners were asked how the constellation of urban cores scattered discretely across the Barcelona Plain could be better connected, thereby enabling the continuity of services and the formation of new public spaces, streets and squares. Now, in the greater Barcelona, that has spilled over to the river Besòs and is nearing the river Llobregat, the question of interconnections is very much alive and still necessary; our territory, despite being a rich, various and strong mosaic, is also carved up by barriers. We often employ the concept of cluster to sing the praises of niches of expertise or opportunities in our productive fabric, but left to themselves they operate like condominiums, in splendid self-absorption, preventing us from addressing the general interest.
Unlike a hundred years ago, imagining connections might not mean annexing new municipalities, but sooner or later a new political awareness has to appear so that these issues can be formulated with precision, success and legitimacy. In the workshops of the Urban Project and the Urban Design of Cities courses at the ETSAB-UPC (2010-2013) we explored the theme in laboratory conditions in the hope of offering a contribution to the future of our city.
Josep Parcerisa, architect
Professor of Urban Design
Laboratori d’Urbanisme de Barcelona
April 2015
