“Never in the entire history of Barcelona since the demolition of the walls has the city experienced such a serious threat.“
Yes, no more and no less. The works that give the start of theEixample supervillathey mean the destruction of our city. But,why is its impact so serious?
First of all, because since the end of the 19th century Barcelona has been structured and revolves around the Eixample. If this is damaged, it is the city as a whole that will also suffer the consequences and, beyond that, the metropolitan and Catalan area.
Why is the Eixample so important? Because it is the urban design that best expressesthe equality of spaceand this is what destroys Colau. What a terrible paradox: the destructive progression of equality in public space. ThePlan Cerdàit is one of the best material translations of how to make the city more egalitarian and in this point lies its irreplaceable importance, its essence, because the road network is the first dimension of the urban fact. Then comes the rest.
And this equality is precisely what destroys the disheveled supervilla project of Ada Colau and its necessary collaborators: ERC and the socialist party.
Cerdàhe conceived a city in which there were no first or second category streets, nor areas that concentrated the population with the highest income. Everything was mixed in every building and in every street. Cerdà conceives oneurbbecausepalliï social inequalityand not be reduced in space. It does so on the basis of a regular plot where all the streets have the same width of 20 metres, with the few exceptions of the momentous 50-metre thoroughfares such as Diagonal or Gran Via. In this way, it is guaranteed that some owners, some shops, some neighbors are not favored more than others. Equality occurs at all levels, even with the identical availability of trees: one every 20 meters.
It is the complete opposite of Colau's superilla thatcreate one-third of prime streets with no traffic and mock green, and offload all pollution and traffic on the remaining two-thirds of the streets. The works that have now begun in a few spots are the prelude to evil.
But what's more, in a city so unequal where more than 1,000 people are forced to live on the streets and where nocturnal debauchery is the daily bread, there can be no first class streets and these roads without traffic, lined with green, will be inhabited by the homeless as their night shelter and will be a space for drinking and early morning parties. There is no possibility of a good life in a Colau empire, only "cutrerio".
The project is far-fetched because one third of the road surface of the Eixample cannot be removed without first having a radically different model of mobility based on avery capillary public transport. And that doesn't exist, it's not even considered. Therefore, the removal of streets only leads to collapse, pollution and the loss of Barcelona's centrality in relation to the territory.
In fact, the tactical urbanism that has been applied has already given us a taste of what is to come. Now, with the works and their subsequent consolidation, the taste will become an endemic evil. Never in the entire history of Barcelona since the demolition of the walls has the city experienced such a serious threat. Not even in the periods of maximum speculation, which densified the city beyond measure, but which kept the fabric of the Eixample untouched.
And if all that wasn't enough, there is a scandalous onemocks democracy and our dignity as citizens. Whoever filled his mouth with the word "participation" now refuses to endorse the superilla in a public consultation.Do you want a greater mockery of the democratic sense and participation?
But it is even worse because the transformation is processed without guarantees, because instead of being based on urban planning, it acts as if it were a simple reform of the sidewalks, when the break with the city model and its metropolitan repercussions are obvious.
Font: https://conversesacatalunya.cat
