Our recent bike tour of Poblenou reveals the urban justice issues around municipal vs. community-led greening projects in the rapidly urbanizing Barcelona neighborhood.
by Filka Sekulova, Francesc Baró, Isabelle Anguelovski, Luis Campos
(Read this post in Spanish)
As a means of coming together to mark the final stages of the URIP Stakeholder process (in the framework of the Naturvation EU project), on October, 8 2020, the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and ENT organized a biketour exploring new green spaces and innovations taking place in Poblenou, a post-industrial neighborhood within the Sant Marti district of Barcelona. About 30 of us, participants from academia, local public institutions, social and environmental associations, as well as neighborhood groups, came together while keeping safe distances and security measures in an event marked (but thankfully not defined) by the COVID-19 pandemic. During our bike tour, we explored varied typologies of Nature-based solutions—from city-planned large-scale projects to community-driven, informal interventions—and also met with grassroots groups fighting to stay in their neighborhood as gentrification and urbanistic pressures mostly associated with the 22@ Plan set to transform 200 hectares of formerly industrial lots into service and IT sector areas.
Municipal greening interventions
Our visit began at the Parc de les Glòries, a recently completed part of the ambitious and long-awaited urban transformation of Glòries . Situated next to a densely entangled traffic hub that will be transferred to an underground tunnel, the new park assembles preexisting public space with new green landscapes of biodiversity, ‘unmanaged’ forms of nature, and areas for social interaction and sports. We met with the planners of the “Urban Canopy” project of IRBIS, who explained how ongoing discussions around the environmental costs and benefits of burying traffic will determine the next stages of its development. Today, the park is widely used as a recreational space, but its impact on housing prices in the area is yet to be seen.
Parc de les Glories
Our next stop was the newly developed green corridor of Cristobal de Moura, an area formerly locked in by industrial complexes transformed into a pedestrian green street. As explained by a planner working for Barcelona City, the corridor contains sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) elements that retain and reuse rainwater and transform the existing sewage infrastructure while providing much needed greenery and recreational space in a post-lockdown Barcelona. But local residents explained that just as the project was approved, so was the investment proposal for a semi-luxury student lodging, now under construction. Members of the local association Poblenou Observatory, explained how the city’s Plan 22@, launched in 2000 to promote new tech and startup economies in the neighborhood, stipulates the insertion of new office buildings and hotels, replacing former industrial buildings with design, IT, and tourism-centered industries. And so the fact that Cristobal de Moura is located next to high-end student housing seems anything but coincidental.
A member of Poblenou Observatory explains recent urbanistic developments associated with Plan 22@ at Cristobal de Moura
Sustainable urban drainage (SUB) at Cristobal de Moura next to student luxury housing under construction
Next we visited the now famous Superblock pilot project inaugurated in 2016 in Poblenou (superilla in Catalan), which reroutes traffic around round 3×3 blocks that now contain recreational and green amenities. The area was lively, with playgrounds busy with families and kids, and pedestrians taking strolls. According to members of the Superblock neighborhood group, the street has resulted in improved access to recreational space and social cohesion—particularly important during the current pandemic—despite the initial opposition of some residents and businesses who feared losing their parking spots or clientele. The neighborhood group also reflected on the possible gentrification effects associated with the Superblock, while acknowledging its beneficial aspects.
Superblock in Poblenou
Community-driven greening
We went on to explore more informal, community-driven urban gardens like La Vanguardia and ConnectHort. La Vanguardia is a large community garden about half the size of a football field tightly sandwiched between three hotels. Initially occupied by members of the Indignados 15-M movement in 2011-2012, it has since then hosted multiple cultural, social and environmentally-oriented neighbourhood events. Today, the space is threatened to become the front lawn of the nearby Voraport hotel, even though it sits on public land. If expelled, local gardeners say that the area will lose its participative socio-cultural and networking character, along with its gardening spaces, and become a semi-private green area for hotel guests.
ConnectHort is a legal, though temporary, community garden supported by the Pla Buits (Vacant Land) Plan of the Barcelona municipality. Home to an incredible diversity of activities around permaculture, participative composting, organic gardening, ecological construction, meditation and creative hands-on workshops, the space constitutes a true green refuge for many residents, especially during the pandemic. Although it has a contract for four more years, its future is uncertain given that its current location has been designated for a multi-story office building as part of Plan 22@.
ConnectHort urban community garden
LaVanguardia urban community garden, sandwiched between three hotels, one of them under construction
Our bike tour showed participants a range of contrasting green realities. We learned how infrastructure-intensive greening projects like Parc de les Glòries and Cristobal de Moura green corridor, despite their important ecological features, whether intentionally or not, can end up serving the interests of new real estate developments. These stood in stark contrast with the temporality and precariousness of community-led urban gardens that promote community cohesion through the use of, and engagement with nature. Poblenou is undergoing radical transformations focused less space on community-building and more on the service-sector, office-based economy. While the gentrification pressures spawned by Plan 22@ do not provide a rosy outlook for equity, the social movements and mobilizations defending community-oriented spaces and affordable housing are a beacon of hope for social and environmental justice in Poblenou.
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Top photo: Isabelle Anguelovski talking about the Superblock project in Poblenou
All photos by BCNUEJ
