[johnnyforeigner]

I live and work in Poble Nou and I checked out the Superille. It was marvellous.

It is (I believe) a temporary project to explore how it all might work. In that sense, it's prototype and that's in fact really cool too. Basically they did an MVP of a Superille - low cost and very fast - in order to validate their hypotheses.

They mocked up the place to give people a feel of how living in this way could be. And they spent as little as possible - using old tyres and paint and recycled plywood to mark out spaces and make them feel "owned" by the people. Placing large lots of (quite big) trees and plants in pots on the car-free streets to see how it felt to walk down a street that was leafy and spacious and open.

The amount of extra space feels inspiring and liberating. Walking is faster if you want it to be - you can cut across streets and don't need to wait at stop signals. A lot of people riding bikes. A lot of smiles.

They definitely could have done a better job explaining it though. I have friends who support the idea but felt they could have been better informed. It felt like they didn't give enough warning.

However, what is interesting and cool is that once it was in place they did their best to engage residents in a dialogue about the proposal - they painted markings on the tarmac of the streets to lay out spaces for people to assemble and discuss. They had a soapbox platform for people to rant from, and a bunch of chairs scattered around the street for people to sit and discuss. They had walls for comments to be posted.

I certainly hope they go ahead with making it permanent and making more of them.

Cities without care are very different and much more humane places to live. Scale matters and cars warp the scale of a city in ways that are counterproductive to vibrant urban life.

I'm pretty sure we can overcome the technical issues that restrain us from our inevitable transition away from routine private car use in cities. Problems like what to do about parking are a legacy of the current broken system, not a fact of nature. The economic incentives to car ownership and the infrastructure that supports it are baked into cities right now. But this can change - but not by solving parking but by solving the underlying system and that includes pressuring the system to change through initiatives like this.

[superuser2]

I don't think there's much doubt about how awesome it is to live a trivial distance from everything you need. This much is clear from the extreme premium that housing in such places commands compared to freeway-connected suburbs of US cities. It's not surprising that abundance of public space and a lack of through traffic would make them even better.

Cars and their infrastructure are indeed ugly and dangerous, but we have them because they so drastically increase the quality of life available to those who can't or won't pay the rent in the same superblocks as their jobs (or move to tenements).

Increasing the luxuriousness of this kind of premium housing would seem to come at the cost of extracting yet more free time from those who need to come into or through these areas but can't live in them, or yet more money from those who decide to stretch their housing budgets. It'd be entirely appropriate coupled with a massive increase in rail infrastructure or something, but on its own is concerning.

I'll be very interested to see whether US cities that adopt this model can add supply faster than people who used to commute can bid up the price of close-to-everything housing. My guess is no, not even close, a few elites get great lives and everyone else is driven to exurbs.

[matt4077]

With a bit of planning, there is no difference in quality of life for able-bodied people living in communities from "town" up to metropolis:

Center of large city (i. e. new York, Paris):

Above a certain density, public transport becomes the norm across all income levels (cf. bankers in New York).

Suburb of large city down to towns:

For commuters coming in from the suburbs, there are hundreds of cities that show that rail is an option that's affordable and it usually takes 1/2h to the city center.

What motivates people to buy cars seems to be mostly daily life within the suburbs: shopping, getting children to school etc. This is a failure of city planning, because it's perfectly feasible to combine the density of a suburb with local subcenters that provide all daily needs (schools, shopping, medical etc.) within walking distance (let's say 1.5 miles).

Taking the worst as an example, the density of Atlanta's suburbs is about 1000/sq mile (http://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/city-vs-city/6570...). Meaning there are 7074 people within a mile of any given point. That's plenty to sustain the infrastructure to provide for daily needs, although it may mean a need for more, but somewhat smaller schools/shops etc. (If this isn't convincing, consider that Atlanta is the worst of the worst in terms of waste of space. You can easily fit 10000 people within a mile^2 and still have backyards for everyone).

It's only rural living that requires a car. The quality of live in large cities will dramatically increase in the next few years, if only because self-driving cars and car sharing require far fewer parking spots. These make up about half of the space required for cars right now, meaning their abolition could double the space available for pedestrians.

[JaumeGreen]

I do like the idea, but there have been some problems[1].

Miscommunication, neighbours not knowing about the change or what it entailed.

Worse trafic on the main streets out of the superblock, with people that are thinking about leaving.

Having to train children to act differently on the main streets than in the ones in the superblock, as on the later streets they can be more oblivious, like in the park, but all look similar.

Bussinesses loosing tons of bussiness, a couple of bussinesses have reported losses of 40% and 50%.

All this while we know that drivers use the car because they need to, not because they want. Yes, there are alternatives, but you use the car when the alternatives are worse.

So, as I said, I like the idea, but we have to work in the implementation.

[1] in Catalan http://www.elperiodico.cat/ca/noticias/barcelona/veins-lamen...

[ai_maker]

If we are to cite articles here, let me get one from Quim Monzó (a reputed catalan journalist) [1]. I'm pasting a Google translation directly here:

"" Noone can stop it

The latest rumors report that, after the first days of confusion in which many people (myself for example) had just did not understand the superblock Poblenou is so successful that the council considers mounted another even fatter. Instead of the nine islands now recovered and released to the public, the new superblock, which would be the Eixample district, in aggregate compensar- eighties. Sepúlveda go to Paris and Rocafort Aribau, including the four islands of the Clinic. The proliferation of space-and the undeniable fact that trim the circulation paths as important as Roma Avenue, the street Aragon and Great fea- would be a traffic calming infinitely superior to that now allows Poblenou.

In addition, it could hold more activities, not just those that are in the Poblenou. Convert planters of trees of the streets in small urban gardens so residents are planted to tomatoes from parsley. Every afternoon at five, would mime workshops all corners of the street Villarroel. At the intersection of Valencia Viladomat, barbecues because residents can cook sausages grilled tofu and mushrooms in which they exist. Years rain soon, like this, if the mushrooms are imported (Soria, Romania ...) it is verified Mushroom Fair Trade. Without this accreditation we are not allowed to use the picnic tables that are installed because citizens can enjoy these products along with their children. Saying that both barbecues and picnic tables would be designed for students and students of architecture, in a gesture of solidarity and protest sustainable. Once a week, the space freed Gran Via Casanova push forward the Factory of Ideas: a neighbor or neighbor tells a thought that has had this thought and then under discussion between all. It also may explain dreams, which are analyzed equally between everyone.

I can not conclude without noting that bus routes to be amended to avoid going through this supersuperilla would not be fixed. Each driver is free to choose what you want, you also can change from one day to another. This will not only encourage the creativity of colleagues and drivers but the genius of passengers and passenger. That could be targeted opening in September 2018, coinciding with the Feast of Mercy. And I forgot: stretched between the buildings around this area and recovered released settled zip, overflying stops caramelized apples that would allow it (the zip, no stops) than boys and children and adults, and adults could interact with each other and vice versa. ""

[1] http://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20160922/41483140507/aix...

[JaumeGreen]

Quim Monzó is also a quite humorous writer, and this writing is full of his humour. He's making fun of the superblock, an 80 blocks superblock and random bus routes? You can't be fully sure whether he is for or against it, but one tends to make fun of things he disagrees with.

[mjevans]

Thank you, this is the type of data that I was seeking when I quickly read the article looking for substantive descriptions and data.

[bernatfp]

Sorry if this sounds pedantic, but the singular of "Superilles" is "Superilla".