But in many ways, it is a better representation of the changes that Barcelona’s urban plan will spur in the city. It is somewhat rough around the edges, with construction fencing up in several spots and rows of potted trees giving it a homemade, low-budget feeling. It is not as polished as the superblock around the Sant Antoni market, which came two years after it. The Poblenou superblock, in geographical context. But it was the first built as part of the city’s new urban plan - the first of what are intended to be dozens, eventually hundreds, in coming years. Technically speaking, the Poblenou superblock is Barcelona’s fourth. “Suddenly, you meet your neighbors, you can have dinner outside, kids playing in the street. “When we came here, this was like a ghost town there was no life,” she says. She’s lived in Poblenou all her life and moved to the area that later became a superblock seven years ago. Silvia Casorrán, an environmental scientist and bike activist, jumps in. In the Poblenou superblock, on a street once reserved for cars, neighbors gather for a birthday party on October 14, 2018. “The feeling of being with my kids, playing in the middle of the road, that was incredible.” “It was amazing when they stopped the cars,” says Norma Nebot, a documentary filmmaker, looking at me wide-eyed over a can of beer. The sun is still out, and the warm air smells of wild grasses growing in the fresh plantings nearby. On an early October evening, neighbors sit and sip drinks to the sound of children’s shouts and laughter. Inside the superblock in the Poblenou neighborhood, in the middle of what used to be an intersection, there’s a small playground, with a set of about a dozen picnic tables next to it, just outside a local cafe. This is part two in a five-part series about the comprehensive urban plan being implemented in Barcelona, Spain, which would reclaim more than half the streets now devoted to cars for mixed-use public spaces, or “superblocks.” This reporting project was supported by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, where the author, David Roberts, is a senior fellow.
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