Barcelona's Superblocks (Superilles) — From the Poblenou Pilot to a City-Wide Health Model

Starting with Poblenou in 2016, Barcelona began converting sections of its Eixample grid into 'superilles' (superblocks): 3x3 clusters of city blocks where through-traffic is excluded from interior streets, freeing the reclaimed space for pedestrians, cycling and green infrastructure. The city's official plan envisions extending the model across roughly 500 intersections of the grid, though rollout since 2016 has been incremental and politically contested, with several planned superblocks delayed or scaled back after resident and business pushback.

Barcelona City Council, BCNecologia, ISGlobal and the Public Health Agency of Barcelona (ASPB) have jointly implemented and evaluated the model, converting interior streets in successive superblocks and monitoring environmental and health outcomes.

A health-impact assessment led by ISGlobal with ASPB and BCNecologia, published in Environment International (2019), modelled five exposure pathways (air pollution, noise, heat, green space and physical activity) against mortality data and estimated that full implementation of the original plan could prevent about 667 premature deaths a year across Barcelona, add close to 200 days of life expectancy per resident on average, and save roughly EUR 1.7 billion annually. A follow-up mixed-methods evaluation ('Salut als Carrers') across the three earliest superblocks (Poblenou, Sant Antoni and Horta), published in BMC Public Health in February 2025, measured a 24% drop in street-level NO2 (from about 47 to 36 micrograms per cubic metre) and a 5.4% drop in noise (54 to 51 dB) in the converted streets, alongside resident-reported gains in perceived wellbeing, sleep quality and social interaction, and higher observed walkability and outdoor activity.

The model is not without documented downsides. Academic case studies of Barcelona's related Poblenou industrial-to-innovation rezoning (22@) found an 86% rise in local housing prices between 1997 and 2002 and displacement of small firms and residents, and critics have raised similar gentrification concerns about superblock streets becoming more desirable. The city's own pace of rollout — well short of the original scale ambition a decade on — is itself evidence that political and commercial resistance is a real constraint on scaling this kind of intervention, not just a communications problem.