What fundamental problem are you addressing?
“Superblock mainstreaming” addresses the question of how the Superblock approach can be successfully implemented in order to use its potential as part of the transformation to climate-friendly and climate-resilient cities. With a view to the implementation of “superblocks” in Barcelona, it is not just about reducing motorized private traffic, making street and urban spaces more attractive for residence and use in the sense of qualitative interior development, or implementing Sponge City principles. Current research suggests that superblocks can also contribute to shorter routes if many superblocks are implemented in a city instead of just isolated ones. Aspects such as the associated upgrading of districts and the subsequent protection of residential and commercial buildings from crowding out are also relevant in terms of urban development policy. As a result, “superblocks” and their implementations as an urban development policy approach bring with them both great opportunities and diverse challenges, which must be negotiated at the interfaces of various topics between administrative units and various groups of actors: Successful implementation involves issues of mobility, housing policy, public space design, climate adaptation, participation, etc. in the area of conflict between politics, administration, intermediary players (district secretariats, civil societal organizations), stakeholders, local businesses and residents. In this case, the Basic hypothesis of “superblock mainstreaming”, that superblocks can only develop their potential for a more resilient society when they transform local action routines.
However, such a change in social conditions represents a major challenge — especially for planning administrations that are organized in a division of labor. In addition to political mandates that are sometimes formulated in a sub-complex way, this can also have a negative effect on the interest in initiating and advancing discourses and projects to implement superblocks. Superblock research suggests that different implementation strategies in different cities are due to different conceptual understandings. It is therefore important to discuss the scope and scope of the concept.
The problems that “superblock mainstreaming” is intended to address in particular are procedural and substantive: How can processes be designed to meet the complexity and different interests and address substantive issues in order to be able to successfully implement superblocks on a larger scale, even after just a few pilot tests? And: What role can administrations play in this, which can neither (nor should) implement superblocks alone, but which still play a central coordinating and moderating role, in which they must also convince with good arguments.
So is our problem hypothesis, that the diversity and relevance of the topics associated with superblocks is not discussed sufficiently broadly either within the actions of administrations or with local actors to actually use the great potential that the approach also has for local cities. This applies in particular to five facets: (1) In terms of content, implementation options are not sufficiently conceptually articulated — such as handling areas for commercial transport, car sharing or alternative speed regimes such as “Tempo 10”, possible measures against gentrification, etc.; (2) Within administrations, discourses are not conducted broadly enough to actually bring all thematically relevant specialist bodies into (co-) responsibility; (3) In discourse with the population and those affected (industry, etc.), proactive strategies must be chosen, in particular those in attracts particularly relevant actors to the respective districts, even and especially when they raise critical concerns; (4) Discourses should increasingly focus on and convey the diverse positive changes in urban life across the social spectrum (heat, sponge city, road safety, air quality); (5) Such benefits should also be discussed with regard to their potential for political communication, because superblocks are not just “nice-to-have” (and optional) — with against the background of climate adaptation, Climate protection and climate justice are simultaneously claimed to contribute to social “progress” by developing the status quo of social mobility and urban life into more climate-friendly forms.
By “Superblock Mainstreaming” developing findings on implementation, discussable and thus also making them more negotiable, it is not least intended to increase the willingness that administrations will successfully take on the implementation of Superblocks.
Which habits would you like to change or mainstream through which approach?
Superblocks aim to change social mobility behavior in cities by making non-automotorized mobility more attractive and becoming a matter of course. This can also lead to other forms of appropriation of public space and coexistence. To do this, however, superblocks must be successfully implemented, with administrations — in their function of presenting successful technical concepts in the political field between executive, legislative, sovereign and various groups of needs — playing a central role in implementation. “Superblock mainstreaming” therefore aims to mainstream the habits of action in administrations for the approach and its challenges.
What would you like to work on during the booster?
The booster should be used to
- pre-structure the content of interviews and points for recommendations for action by means of literature research;
- to gain current experience from implementation processes in other cities (e.g. Barcelona, Vienna, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Zurich) through expert interviews;
- to critically question the ongoing Superblock processes through expert interviews in Basel;
- to discuss, specify and consolidate implementation knowledge in a workshop with implementation and enabling partners and, if applicable, other experts;
- to compile procedural recommendations for “superblock mainstreaming” in Basel and other Swiss cities.
In the spirit of transformative research, the project is intended to raise awareness of relevant actors in order to be able to implement “Superblocks” as a future-oriented approach more easily or more successfully, where the location requirements permit.