a Utopian City- Case of Barcelona

Utopian City

• A utopia is a community or society possessing highly desirable or near perfect qualities.

• The word was coined by Sir Thomas More in Latin for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean.

• The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt to create an ideal society, and imagined societies portrayed in fiction.

• It has spawned other concepts, most prominently dystopia.

Utopian City – Ram Rajya (Indian Version)

1. Incremental

Types of Utopian city

2. From scratch

Barcelona , Spain

• Barcelona is the capital city of the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain

• The country's 2nd largest city after Madrid. • A population of 1.6 million[within its administrative limits. • Its urban area extends beyond the administrative city limits with

a population of around 4.5 million people, being the sixth-most populous urban area.

• Barcelona was Europe's fourth best business city and fastest improving European city, with growth improved by 17% per year as of 2009.

• Barcelona is the 14th most "livable city" in the world according to lifestyle magazine Monocle.

A Five-Act History of Urbanism in Barcelona Act 1: • Establishment Located on the northeastern coast of Spain, Barcelona, has a storied history.

• General Hamilcar Barca founded the city around 230 BC. In 19 BC, it fell under Roman rule.

• The city boundaries of the built environment remained largely unchanged until the 19th century.

• The oldest part of the Barcelona is known as the "Ciutat Vella," and is divided into smaller neighborhoods. Though it's still characterized by tiny, winding streets from centuries ago,.

Act 2: • Civil engineer Ildefons Cerda designed a plan for the "Eixample," Catalan for "extension." in 1856.

• Cerda dictated a regular street grid with city blocks measuring 371 feet by 371 feet, buildings with a depth of no more than 78 feet on each side, a central green space within each block, and streets measuring 65 to 98 feet wide—the optimum dimensions to ensure a good quality of life—maximum daylight, strong air circulation, ample living space.

• One of Barcelona's most-unique urban elements is the octagonal street intersection and city block shape.

• Cerdas did that to make it easier to turn corners and to provide more public space on the sidewalks.

Act 3:

• One of the city's—and the world's—most lauded public spaces is the Park Güell.

• Though the street network of modern Barcelona is very regimented and regular, Gaudi's plan for the 42-acre park is modeled after British landscapes, which favors snaking pathways, unmanicured plantings, and an irregular design that mimics what nature might do if left untouched. It's located in the hilly western section of the Barcelona.

• Wealthy landowner Eusebi Güell commissioned the plan, which was to include housing for wealthy denizens of the city and was modeled after Ebeneezer Howard's Garden City movement

Act 4:

• Waterfront Rehabilitation

• The 1992 Olympics spurred the most-recent changes to the overall urban fabric, namely ring roads around the city and the revitalized waterfront.

• Maragall moved part of a highway underground, making the waterfront easier to access by pedestrians.

• He also built promenades—like the one in Port Vell—and sandy beaches, which continue to attract loads of visitors.

Act 5:

• Barcelona built its first Metro line in 1924. It's since grown to encompass 11 lines with 166 stations and 80 miles of track.

Cerdà’s central aim

• Using quadrangular blocks of a standard size, with strict building controls to ensure that they were built up on only two sides, to a limited height, leaving a shady square or garden in between.

• This recreational open space with open sides to the blocks was to guarantee the houses the maximum amount of sun, light and ventilation.

• The angled corners allowed the streets to broaden at every intersection making for greater visibility, and fluid traffic in all directions.

• Cerda wanted housing blocks to be orientated NW-SE to ensure all apartments received sunshine during the day.

• Each district would be of twenty blocks, containing all the community shops and services, and each block were to have at least 800 square meters of gardens.

• The blocks went up to much more than the planned heights, and in practice all the blocks have been enclosed, with very few inner gardens surviving. Most of the inner courtyards today are occupied by car parks, workshops and shopping centers.

Barcelona reminds us how smart the fundamentals are when it comes to making great cities.

1. Don't think like a city planner, architect or engineer. Think like a citizen.

• For Barcelona's architects, city-building is as much about the public realm, of "civitas" or the public life well lived, as it is about buildings.

• Cerdà functioned as city planner, architect, even health specialist - in other words, as a holistic city-builder.

• At a time when silo thinking still seeks to break down urban thinking into disciplines and specialties across North America, Cerdà’s and Barcelona's holistic approach is something we should all aspire to.

2. Architects, quit complaining about rules!

• It's true that every city has rules that are both smart and dumb. Great architects know though, that genius often arises out of constraint.

• Barcelona's Passeig de Gracia boulevard. ,like other beautiful streets that regulate their height.

• Street width and other pattern . The easiest example is Gaudi's La Pedrera, which acts as a “typical” chamfered corner building n-makers

3. Make walking (and biking) irresistible.

• La Rambla, one of the best people streets in the world.

• Cerda's l'Eixample (Expansion) plan made walking enjoyable almost everywhere - 50 percent of all street space is dedicated to walking space, with the other 50 percent for all other forms of 'traffic.‘

• Bike-lanes, it’s taken from the 50 percent that's for the rest of traffic, not from the walking half.

4. Small, tight streets work great, and so do wide streets, if designed right. • The tight streets and alleys with high, enclosing building heights that, combined with the street widths, create an

excellent "urban room,“

• Beautiful street-scaping and mature trees define "sub-areas" of the street and create a sense of scale, the street doesn't feel wide or have any of the usual weaknesses of wide streets.

5. Tall buildings aren't evil - but don’t put them just anywhere.

• The key is to pick the smart locations for height, and to demand a beautiful building and public realm interface.

• Jean Nouvel's Torre Agbar, beautifully terminating many views across the city on the Diagonal.

Future planning Actions

• Smart Lighting.

• Smart Energy.

• Smart Water.

• District Heating and Cooling.

• Smart Transportation.

• Zero Emissions Mobility.

• Open Government.

Labyrinthine alleys, majestic avenues, meandering parks, and pristine beaches—this is the urban fabric of modern Barcelona, a city 2,500 years in the making.

Bibliography

• Barcelona: The Urban Evolution of a Compact City

• http://www.dwell.com/post/slideshow/five-act-history-urbanism-barcelona#2

• http://www.activelearningabroad.org/cursos/Barcelona%20City%20Planning%20Architecture.pdf

• http://www1.appstate.edu/~crepeaur/5420/neumann%20city%20planning%20and%20infrastructure.pdf

• http://www.22barcelona.com/content/view/887/90/lang,en/

• http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/53030/Barcelona

• http://www20.gencat.cat/portal/site/culturacatalana/menuitem.be2bc4cc4c5aec88f94a9710b0c0e1a0/?vgnextoid=d07cef2126896210VgnVCM1000000b0c1e0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=d07cef2126896210VgnVCM1000000b0c1e0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=detall2&contentid=8865110e279d7210VgnVCM1000008d0c1e0aRCRD&newLang=en_GB

• Esa Shaikh

• F.Y.M.Arch