3 Urbanism Lessons From Barcelona’s Gracia District
Barcelona is like a second home to me, and there’s no neighborhood in this enchanted city that has enchanted me more than Gràcia.
If you’re unfamiliar with Gràcia, it feels like its own small village.. And that’s because it is. Well, it was until 1897 when it became part of Barcelona. Gràcia has its own street layout, architectural style, and even culture (it’s one of last Catalan-dominant bastions in Barcelona).
It’s clear where other neighborhoods end and Gràcia begins.
To a North American like me, Gràcia has exactly the type of stunning, romanticized city feel that we imagine when we think of European cities.
It’s the type of neighborhood I think we all see and wish we had more of in the United States. Yet, we have refused to build much of it ourselves.
If you find the charm in a place like Gràcia, then here are some takeaways from its urban design and soul that we can take away as we seek to improve our own cities.
1) Build Streets for Pedestrians
Gràcia is marked by thin streets, metallic terraces with swirls and patterns that feel like they watch down on you. You’ll see the occasional clothesline hanging across between buildings occupied by t-shirts, pants, or yellow and red Catalan flags.
It’s a living example of what happens when you build cities for the people who live there, not for those who want to get in and out of it.
In Gràcia, everything is walkable. Grocery stores, metro stations, community centers, restaurants and everything else is within a few minutes walking from anywhere in the neighborhood.
There are some streets that are blocked off for pedestrians. However, pedestrians stroll the whole width of most streets, and if a car comes, people move. the norm is for pedestrians to take up space.
When a car tries to come through, everybody seems to look visibly annoyed that they’re trying to cut through the neighborhood, sending a message that this is a neighborhood for people to walk around.
There are a few lessons here that we can talk to making improvements to cities.
First, make being a car in a vibrant city area miserable. As it should be. Cars require an excessive amount of space, they contaminate the air and soil, they kill pedestrians, and they cost us all a lot of money. Make the streets thin, the speed limit very slow, and parking a nightmare, and you’ll have a better city for pedestrians.
For locals, this isn’t a problem because the neighborhood has great metro access at several points, easy biking use and parking, and small neighborhood buses. There’s no reason to use a car in Gràcia.
Very few of the local tax-paying residents of Gràcia own cars. If they own a vehicle, it’s a “moto.” If they do own a car, it stays in a garage five days a week and they likely only use it to leave Barcelona on weekends.
The result is you can always see lots of people walking around Gràcia and its a key piece of its vibrant street life.
2) The Plaza as a Community and Public Space
All of these thin streets are like arteries that lead to organs. And in Gràcia, those organs are its numerous squares (plaças). Every few streets when walking around the neighborhood you’ll stumble into a suddenly open space.
These plazas have a mix of green space, fountains, benches, restaurants, and shops. Gràcia has so many of them, and each of them is an lively community space.
In 2019, when I went to a chess club in Gràcia, we played games outside in a the plazas on exceptionally nice days. Around us were kids playing tag or throwing water balloons at each other after schools, parents talking, occasionally also getting tapped to play tag, and young people sitting at the restaurants outside that flood the perimeter, out of range of any stray water balloons. This is where people like my friends and I would sit and drink a coffee or beer and have a sandwich or a tapa.
By nighttime, these often turn into their own little public clubs, where everybody from Gràcia can go hang out with their friends. In festival season, they turned into concert venues too, complete with portable stages, which brings me to my favorite part about Gràcia.
3) The People Make The Place
You can’t separate the urbanism of a place from the communities of people who actually live there. After all, they’re the once who have built it.
There’s a cliché that you should treat the city like your home. Nowhere have I seen this be more true than Gràcia.
In 2022, I stayed in Barcelona all summer and got to see something really exception: Les festes de Gràcia. (The Gràcia festivals.) Guided by my friend Laura, I got to experience the neighborhood as a local.
During The Festes De Gràcia, The Whole Neighborhood Decorates Their Street
Every street competes against one another to make the most impressive decorations of a certain theme. When I was there in 2022, one was themed as Don Quixote, another themed as New York City. They worked for weeks or months to build elaborate, beautiful decoration which they would then show off to the Gràcia community.
They decorate their neighborhood like one decorates their home for the holidays.
That’s because to them, Gràcia’s streets are like the floors in their own home.
At night during the festival, the neighborhood turned into one big house party. I credit this week as a turning point for my journey to learn Catalan, because Gràcia is one of the last-standing neighborhoods in Barcelona where Catalan is still the dominant, primary language.
I was teamed up with Carrer de Progrés, because of Laura’s allegiance to them, and suddenly those who lived on this street were like my teammates and friends.
I saw with my owe eyes how, when community members team up and treat their neighborhood like their home, they create something absolutely magical.
Thousands turn out every year to see the decorations, and the locals work on all of this for the joy of it.
My experiences in Gràcia showed me that, to build a great urban life, this is really what matters. the people make the place.
They’re the ones who’ve molded the streets to be better suited for outdoor pottery classes than high-speed traffic. They’re the ones who made the plazas the lively all-age public spaces they are. But most important, in my eyes, is their clear desire to work together to make their vibrant city streets something they can be proud of.
Whether in a big city like New York or a small town like my Vermont hometown, making positive changes in our life’s urban and rural surroundings requires us to work together towards a shared vision.
Ultimately, that’s what inspires me most about Gràcia, and I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy the fruits of their collective labor.
Gràcia is The Kind of Neighborhood I Wish Anybody Could Choose to Live In
Unfortunately, tight-knit communities with dense, walkable spaces and great public transit are rare in the United States. And were it exists, it’s often reserved in a few ultra-expensive neighborhoods in a few ultra-expensive cities like New York’s West Village.
I believe you shouldn’t need to be rich to have access to clear city air, walkable spaces, and decent public transit.
I would love to take these lessons from Gràcia as we continue to improve our cities to be spaces where people can live healthier, have access to everything close by, and by a part of a special community of their own.
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