Green light to the future superblocks

BarcelonaThe Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB) has taken steps to update, for the first time in 50 years, the part of the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM) that regulates road systems, which had not been touched since the rule was created in 1976. The entity has already made an initial approval of the changes and now awaits final approval, as reported today by El Periódico and confirmed by ARA with the AMB.

The changes would directly affect the integration of superblocks and green axes into the metropolitan road network. In fact, the objective behind this modification would be precisely to protect this type of road in court, where they have already faced adverse rulings. In fact, until now, this was the regulation that courts had relied on on several occasions to overturn green axes and superblocks, promoted by the previous government, led by Ada Colau. This was the case, for example, with the rulings that were issued against the pedestrianization of Consell de Cent and Enric Granados streets in Barcelona.

Thus, the new legal framework aims to redefine the functions of the road system. Until now, the 1976 regulation conceived of streets as a space essentially for transit. Now, the modification also includes elements to promote sustainable mobility and minimize the effects of climate change, as well as the general improvement of the environment in metropolitan areas beyond the mere circulation of vehicles.

In this way,

courts had come to consider that the reform of these streets to turn them into superblocks constituted "a hidden modification of the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM)"

because it had been processed as if it were an ordinary construction project, without modifying the city's general planning. Now, with the eventual modification —which will be definitively approved in one of the AMB's upcoming plenary sessions— the PGM will include within its definition the new functions of the road system, which will safeguard future green axes that metropolitan municipalities wish to implement.

The changes, as the newspaper points out, have already generated opposition from the employers' association Foment de Treball and also from the union of commercial associations Barcelona Oberta and other commercial guilds, who argue that the metropolitan reform would not be legal because it seeks to deliberately circumvent rulings already issued by the courts instead of complying with them.