The Pedestrian: A Privilegied Actor in Barcelona’s Public Space
Cities are the reflection of the endless migration of their inhabitants in everyday life. Considering its vastness and the means of transportation developed to travel within the urban space, the experience of city dwellers is relatively complex. Against this background, whose complexity has never ceased to grow, pedestrians seem to have been left aside. Yet they are everywhere, even if their presence is obscured by the heavy traffic. On the other hand, in some cities, like Barcelona, they have been allotted their own privileged space. In the 1990’s, Barcelona adopted its own robust urban planning strategy that focussed specifically on the place of pedestrians in public spaces. Our objective is to identify policies in the various projects developed by the city’s urban planners policies to promote walking. Barcelona’s public space will be presented as a model of pedestrian friendly urban planning.