Micro-climatic aspects of Barcelona's Superblock strategy

Abstract

Warming trends in the cities and the Urban Heat Island Effect represent negative environmental impacts of urbanization, which, combined with increased air and noise pollution, can contribute to the deterioration of physical and mental health of its inhabitants. In the city of Barcelona, urban planners proposed the Superblocks project as a mean to decrease car usage, improve urban microclimate conditions and the overall comfort of adjacent public spaces. By the conversion of side streets into public spaces that prioritize pedestrian use, the traffic of motor vehicles inside the Superblocks is reduced to a minimum. The overall impact of this ground-breaking urban renewal in the metropolitan scale is yet to be seen but the urban microclimatic effects could be already evaluated using state-of-the-art computational simulation. The tool Urban Weather Generator was also used to evaluate the influence of the implementation of the Superblocks in the metropolitan microclimate. These two tools for the study of urban climate were used to assess the impact of Superblocks in the urban climate, and the applicability of the two employed computational methods were compared.