Superblocks: How Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as an example of reducing car dominance and as a model for walkable neighborhoods.
What it is
A short Vox video on Barcelona's superblocks, an urban design approach that closes interior streets to through traffic to return space to pedestrians.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2017 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Cites sreenadh · 2017-05 · on “India plans massive shift to electric cars”
I believe that India has to leapfrog the whole car obsession and move over to an effective and extensive public transportation and make cities more “superblocks" like in Barcelona ( [this video] ). Adam ruins Cars ( [LINK] ) is a rather informative piece you should watch.
Cites IlegCowcat · 2019-06 · on “Superblocks: Barcelona’s plan to take back streets from cars”
Ahh this is a new article from 2019. I remember the 2016 Vox video when they were putting in the first Superblocks. [this video] Good to see Barcelona is going ahead with the Superblocks. Found a 2018 video by those great Streetfilms folks: [LINK]
Cites toomuchtodo · 2024-12 · on “South Korea's population faces point of no return”
I think there is a potential, limited path to success here (depending on what "success" looks like), and it’s likely assisting parents in clustering (via subsidizing moving expenses and affordable family housing) around schools that remain (because many are closing due to funding cuts and the demographic cliff) to maintain walkability for both school commute and socialization. It’s a bandaid, but the only option I see viable considering the cost of re-engineering urban planning to fix decades of car centric policy. Those costs are enormous, and I think in a lot of cases, it’ll be cheaper to allow some places to go terminal/fallow as their population declines. This doesn’t juice the fertility