The city without streets

The street is dead, Le Corbusier dogmatically stated in the 1930s. With this provocative sentence, the French-Swiss architect proposed a radiant city, the Ville Radieuse, where buildings would rise on pillars to allow an infinite park to pass below, without delineated streets, and the hallways of residential blocks would take on the role of “interior streets” leading to the homes. It was a time between the wars, when the modern movement aimed to reinvent the way of living and building cities, in an attempt to rewrite a story that appeared tragic.

The project that, unfortunately, has begun to be built in Saudi Arabia, The Line, aims to complete, in 50 years, a city for 9 million people with a single straight street 170 kilometers long and 200 meters wide. To give you an idea, 170 kilometers is the distance between Barcelona and Vielha or between Lleida and Girona in a straight line, without concessions to geography, populated areas, or nature. As if that weren’t enough, this longitudinal folly will have mirror facades on the outside, mostly desert, which, in addition to dividing the natural habitat of many species, will confuse birds or other animals, making them believe they are flying toward a distant horizon. Something similar to what happened to Jim Carrey at the end of The Truman Show, when the bow of his boat passed through the sky-shaped backdrop.

Looking at the virtual images of life inside this “city,” the atmosphere it recreates is striking, resembling a “mall” that we’re already accustomed to and which, in the Middle East, is so common in the latest ex novo cities built from scratch in the middle of nowhere: a central hallway with stores on both sides. This single central space, in the words of its creators, is made “to avoid having streets.” Apparently, this time the climate emergency and pollution in cities have once again sentenced streets as culprits, eliminating them ruthlessly in the city’s construction, in the name of eco-efficiency and sustainability.

A grid of streets was the foundational act of Roman cities. Everything began with an intersection, that of the Cardus Maximus, a street roughly oriented north-south, with the Decumanus Maximus, running east-west, although other orientations were also common depending on the context. The intersection of the Cardus with the Decumanus gave rise to one of the city gates. On one side, the Forum (outside), where commerce with the exterior occurred, and on the other, the interior of the city, which grew in a grid pattern, adding parallel and perpendicular streets depending on the size of the insulae or plots. The city’s growth eventually overflowed the gate itself, so the forum became the central public space of the city; the place for gathering and debate.

They have once again sentenced streets as culprits, eliminating them ruthlessly in the city’s construction

In Barcino, the Cardus of the Roman city is represented by the Call and Llibreteria streets, and the Decumanus is the line formed by the streets of Bisbe and Ciutat. They form an angle of about 45º with the cardinal axes, quite similar to Ildefons Cerdà’s Eixample, built almost two thousand years later. It is curious to observe how the boundary of the Eixample that Cerdà designed, rotated again 45º from the grid of the Eixample, is the faithful reinterpretation of the Roman Cardus and Decumanus, in this case, the Meridiana avenue (north-south) and the Paral·lel avenue (east-west), at the intersection of which lies the outskirts; the port where we trade with the outside world. You might say that the 2004 Forum of Cultures was held in the wrong place…

The intersection, the crossroad, is what causes the encounter; the urban space par excellence. As the late architect and professor of Urbanism Manuel de Solà-Morales rightly pointed out, the true cell of the Barcelona Eixample is not the block, but the intersection of chamfered streets. Not for nothing, the first trial to see how this new Eixample architecture would look was to reproduce at full scale a street intersection inside the city walls. Specifically, at the intersections of Doctor Dou and Pintor Fortuny streets, which can still be visited.

Compared to other cities, Barcelona is small and compact. It encourages urban life through its streets, which, along with its parks and squares, create spaces for meeting and exchange. But it also makes life very comfortable and efficient. The grid has been adopted by countless cities worldwide, in different sizes and rhythms. It facilitates mobility and, with that, optimizes the energy we use to move around. The proposal for the Arab city, 170 kilometers long by 200 meters wide, could be easily solved with a grid of 5.83 kilometers per side. Something like a square from Llevant Beach to the end of Paral·lel, bordering the Ronda de Dalt. An area of 34 km², which would fit perfectly into the 100 km² that Barcelona occupies.

It’s no surprise that the promoters announce high-speed trains that will allow travel in just 20 minutes from end to end of the city at over 500 km/h – unless there are intermediate stops. Very sustainable. I can’t imagine forgetting my keys at home and having to take the bullet train again, something that in Barcelona, for example, we would solve by walking, biking, or taking the V15. A city designed inefficiently from the start can’t pretend to be more eco-efficient than others.

I wouldn’t want to live there either and need an ambulance, put out a fire, or be rescued in case of an attack or any emergency. Nothing good seems to come out of a city founded on a single street. Upon closer inspection, a Cardus. A very large Cardus.