Green Ramblas
Eco-Neighbourhood

Completing the urban network
Local links enable metropolitan connections

Barcelona is historically structured by means of axes that are parallel and perpendicular to the sea. The proposal for the new Green Ramblas neighbourhood in the Sant Andreu District in north-eastern Barcelona is organized by establishing local links that enable necessary metropolitan connections that are now missing. These local links are the Six parks Promenade and the Green Ramblas.

The Six Parks Promenade
The urban link perpendicular to the sea

North-east of the city, the main perpendicular axes to the sea are the Besòs river, with its Fluvial Park, and the future Sagrera Linear Park. We propose to link these two metropolitan green axes with the major parks located close to the project’s site by means of “The Six Parks Promenade”, a pedestrian and slow mobility path that completes the parks system at the east of the city and links the sea and the mountains through a continuous network of metropolitan scale parks.

Green Ramblas
The urban links parallel to the sea

The urban axes parallel to the sea have the capacity of establishing transversal connections between the neighbourhoods at the north of Besos river, now separated by major infrastructures such as the railway. The proposal strengthens these transversal connections through an adaptation to the scale and speed of the pedestrian, a renaturalization of the public space, and an insertion of new programs, thus generating a new model of sustainable urban axis: the Green Ramblas.

Green Ramblas
A new eco-neighbourhood organized around the ecological management of the water cycle

At the scale of the project’s site, we propose to use again these parallel connections to the sea as the clearest and most effective way of linking the adjacent neighbourhoods of Sant Andreu and Bon Pastor that border the site. These connections materialize into a system of public spaces, the Green Ramblas, that cross the site along the lines of maximum slope.

These ramblas reintroduce the original meaning of rambla as “riera” -the typical dry river along the Mediterranean coast-, and, with it, its strategic role in the management of the water cycle. Thus, rainwater can infiltrate, and wastewater can be cleaned in phytodepuration gardens. Between these ramblas, bands of buildable space will absorb, through time, the different programs, building typologies, inhabitants and lifestyles.