Barcelona’s Post-Pandemic Planning. May Superblocks be feasible solutions towards the New European Bauhaus?

This work approaches the post-Covid-19 city to reflect on the state of the art of the Barcelona’s approach of Superblock. The basic hypothesis is the following: Superblock, along with the concepts of the 15-minute city and tactical urbanism, can be a feasible solution to renew the existing built environment as it actually combines accessibility, affordability, design, investment, resilience and sustainability according to European Green Deal. The work deals with the case study of Barcelona’s Superblocks and its primordial application in the Poblenou district. Despite being a prepandemic solution, I will demonstrate that this model is suitable to be included in the New European Bauhaus as Superblocks contribute to develop a healthier, safer and more ecologically and socio-economic balanced city in response to the 2020 pandemic outbreak. In order to do so, I will provide the interpretation of the Barcelona’s ‘Superblock’ implemented in Poblenou district as a short-term solution for providing an innovative way of carrying out urban development at a neighborhood scale, mitigating the pandemic negative effects and how this model may succor health, social, and economic inequities. Through a specific fieldwork, interviews and desk research activity, I specifically focus on the impacts of this model in terms of accessibility, affordability, design, investment, resilience and sustainability. Barcelona is currently integrating the Covid-19 recovery context with long-term-strategy development updates, using the UN 2030 Agenda of SDGs as a roadmap. One of these strategies refers to Superblocks, thought as a social unit, a tight-knit community with shared common facilities, resilient against the stresses of climate change and social vulnerability. By the analysis of the Poblenou’s Superblock unit I search to demonstrate how local government implement the concept of Superblock in the city and the ways in which communities are responding to or resisting such interventions.