Barcelona's Resilience
reflections from a week in the Catalan capital
I knew I needed to take a pause. I didn’t know it would be at a crosswalk in Barcelona. A New Yorker abroad, rushing to get to a dinner reservation that still wasn’t for another 15 minutes. Some cliches you just can’t outrun. I found myself tempted to jaywalk and keep going. Instead, I paused. I waited at the street corner, locals to my left and right standing patiently, relaxed even. In that moment, the rush, the tension, the never-ending hustle of the last few weeks in New York caught up with me. When the walking-man sign turned green, I left that stress behind and walked forward with renewed energy from stillness. A European dose of effortlessness.
That’s the funny thing about resilience. Both physically and mentally, in order to literally move forward or have clarity of thought, sometimes you have to pause and wait, or even look back to reflect and learn. Resiliency is not measured by how fast and frequently you succeed, but rather by your ability to pause and bounce back in the face of challenges.
As my week in Barcelona went on, I found myself excited every time I “had to wait” at a crosswalk. It gave me time to really observe the city around me in microdoses: people’s style on the street corners, the way a streetcar glided by an intersection, and hear a little bit of Catalan and Spanish conversations in passing. Each moment revealed a new perspective to me. I felt more patient, more resilient towards the grind of urban living.
In terms of urban planning and design, Barcelona is one of the most resilient cities out there. From Cerdà’s 1860 grid to the more recent Superblocks initiative, its proactive approach towards innovation has put its urban design significantly ahead and made the city a model for urban resilience. The Superblock project’s implementation offers a lesson in pausing, too. The city faced congestion, quality of life issues, and a lack of greenspaces as a result of modern-day challenges to its historic grid. The idea to re-prioritize people over cars, to close off a network of streets within the squared grid to create a larger superblock, was bold and risky at the time. But rather than shy away in fear of the unknown, the city decided to try their experiment out on a block and pause for a year. They paused and let life happen, allowing people to engage with this reclaimed space filled with useful, tactical urbanism. They could always revert back if it didn’t work out after a few months. The result was an overwhelming success for the neighborhood’s quality of life in and around the superblock, and it became a modern symbol of Barcelona’s continued urban resilience. I walked around a few of the superblocks while I was there. The streets were vibrant, full of greenery, multi-mobility, play spaces, and most importantly, people.
Elsewhere around town, the delicate balance between old and new came together nicely. One morning I had coffee at Bar La Camila before shopping at the city’s oldest candlemaker, Cereria Subirà. A walk through the historic Gaudi-designed Casa Batlló was followed by a modern farm-to-table dinner at the newly opened Fugaz. My wandering around the Plaça dels Àngels juxtaposed the modern architectural style of the Museum of Contemporary Art next to the medieval-era buildings throughout El Raval in a way that anecdotally and aesthetically symbolized the city’s resilience. Though Barcelona may be resilient, that's not to say it is perfect. At the heart of the old city, in Ciutat Vella, the historic city center is now the center of another set of modern challenges that will demand Barcelona’s resiliency once more. Compounding crises in housing affordability, the pushback against tourists and Airbnb, and extreme heat and drought vulnerabilities are affecting locals and their quality of life. I am curious to see how urban planners and designers respond.
And that’s to say nothing of the 143+ year-old Basilica de la Sagrada Familia…which is still under construction today. Barcelona, you are definitely resilient, and patient.
Until I get to pause at your crosswalks again soon,
ECF
