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The potential of implementing superblocks for multifunctional street use in cities

Nature Sustainability volume 5, pages 406–414 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Barcelona superblock has been proposed as a sustainable urban neighbourhood transformation strategy in cities. Superblock design reduces space assigned to cars to enable alternative uses for improving liveability and sustainability. Here, the potential for superblock transformation is systematically quantified and evaluated for cities with varying urban forms and densities. A superblock consists of nine (3 × 3) urban city blocks, including interior and exterior streets. Miniblocks, consisting of four (2 × 2) blocks, are proposed as a less-disruptive strategy to initiate urban transformation on which superblocks can build. A geospatial network-based approach is developed to find locations for introducing multifunctional streets. For possible site prioritization, the identified locations are evaluated concerning the potential disruption to traffic. The analysis reveals that the potential for superblocks and miniblocks, as well as their disruption effect, varies considerably across cities and is affected by the urban layout. For some cities, over 40% of the street network is potentially suitable for integrating superblock or miniblock design, providing opportunities for city-scale transition towards more sustainable and liveable cities. A grid-like layout in cities is not a sufficient condition for high superblock potential, and cities with irregular street layouts can show high transformation potential as well.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of superblock design.
Fig. 2: The relative street network length classified as superblocks or miniblocks is modelled for different f values for each case-study city.
Fig. 3: Modelled classification of the street network for selected cities.
Fig. 4: Comparison of the modelled absolute and relative street types for the case-study cities.
Fig. 5: Absolute and relative lengths of all street networks modelled as either superblocks or miniblocks.

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Data availability

The classified streets, including calculated NDI values and all simulated superblocks and miniblocks for the geometric scenario G1, are available for download as shapefiles or GeoJSON files: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4562462.

Code availability

The workflows and code used are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under the project grant 196070 (S.E.). R. Mutschler and F. Khayatian are acknowledged for providing early feedback and K. Orehounig for providing the supportive research context and computation hardware. Map data are copyrighted by OpenStreetMap and available from https://openstreetmap.org.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Urban Energy Systems Laboratory, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Empa, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Sven Eggimann

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  1. Sven Eggimann
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Correspondence to Sven Eggimann.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Isabelle Anguelovski, Chen Feng and Johannes Müller for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Eggimann, S. The potential of implementing superblocks for multifunctional street use in cities. Nat Sustain 5, 406–414 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00855-2

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