Tactical Urbanism: Barcelona Edition

 We talked about tactical urbanism in class a bit and I thought I would share a case of tactical urbanism I've seen in person and thought was really interesting. So in 2020 during Covid, of course, Barcelona enacted tactical urbanism to help encourage social distancing and to help save restaurants to still be able to operate by providing more space in streets to café seating and pedestrians. They accomplished this by closing lanes temporarily and painting them vivid colors to signal that this space was now for pedestrians rather than cars. To this day they still have some of the streets near plaza Catalunya, the major shopping and tourist area, painted to provide opportunity for social distancing in these usually very crowed areas. I think this type of tactical urbanism was successful because it was very quick to install during this time of crisis, the cost to do so was fairly low, it was largely temporary so it could serve its purpose and then be removed when not needed anymore, and its a creative way to help solve the social distancing conundrum during a very confusing time in a highly populated city. They are also using strategies like this to create super blocks around the city but if y'all want to check out more you can read up on it here: https://www.barcelona.cat/urbanismetactic/en