Accessibility or mobility?: Comparative study of urban paradigms for the city of Barcelona

Abstract

Urban planification is a relevant issue for past, present and future cities, and Barcelona, as a global city, cannot avoid this reality and the debate it generates. Recent urban transformations in the Catalan capital have raised the debate about which is the best urban paradigm, with advocates for the actual accessibility transformation, that focus on reducing city trips, against mobility defenders, who believe that traffic, specially based on private vehicles, should be not only maintained but fostered. To understand which model is best suited for Barcelona to overcome the main challenge global cities face nowadays, climate emergency, and reach the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goal 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities-, a bibliographic approach is chosen to show two antagonist urban paradigms examples through case studies: Paris and Tokyo. With these two examples, conclusions are drawn for Barcelona. What is seen is that every model applied to a real city has its strong points and its problems. Because of that, what is needed for the Mediterranean city is a hybrid model that continues the present urban changes but that takes into account characteristics of the pure mobility model.