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ABSTRACT
The increasing concern about climate change has produced growing interest in natural ventilation and urban planning. There seems to be a gap in the study of introducing urban climate into urban planning, even though doing so would increase population comfort and decrease energy spending. Natural ventilation provided by wind flowing through the streets of a city might be considered as a first priority for passive cooling. It is intuitive that if the street grid coincides with wind flow direction, a city will get more wind in the street. Otherwise, building walls will stop the wind. This study addresses this important topic, grounded on the urbanization of Ildefons Cerdà with regard to Barcelona. In this research, a consistency analysis of the grid orientation and wind flow direction is done for Barcelona. The objective is to demonstrate using current technology that Cerdà’s grid orientation, which strove to capture fresh winds in summer and avoid cold winds in winter, really works. Methodologically, we discuss the reasons, found in the vast work of the Cerdà urban plan, for capturing winds; and we demonstrate the goodness of fit of street grid orientation for capturing winds using spatial analysis in GIS.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Foley et al., “Global Consequences of Land Use,” 5734; Eliasson, “The Use of Climate Knowledge”; Grosso and Banchio, “Cities of Wind”; Lomas and Yingchun, “Resilience of Naturally Ventilated.”
2 Hooff and Blocken, “Coupled Urban Wind Flow”; Lippman, “Panel Says Smart Grid Development Critical to Energy Future.”
3 Jiang et al., “Natural Ventilation in Buildings”; Ramponi and Blocken, “CFD Simulation of Cross-Ventilation Flow.”
4 Liu et al., “Natural Ventilation of a Small-Scale Road Tunnel.”
5 Ren, Ng, and Katzschner, “Urban Climatic Map Studies,” 2213.
6 Soria y Puig, Ildefonso Cerda, hacia una teoría general, 30.
7 Pallares-Barbera, Cerdà and Barcelona, 7.
8 Baussells, “Barcelona’s Unloved Planner.”
9 Soria y Puig, Ildefonso Cerda, hacia una teoría general, 137.
10 Cerdà, Monografía estadística de la clase obrera de 1856.
11 Cerdà, Teoría general de la urbanización, 640.
12 UN, “World’s Population Increasingly Urban.”
13 Charles, “Can We Build Cities”; Greenfield, “Where are the World’s Newest Cities”; Kalapurakal, Cities, 2030; Wood, “These Countries are All Building Brand-New Cities.”
14 UNFPA, “Urbanization.”
15 Fujita, Krugman, and Venables, The Spatial Economy.
16 Portney, Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously; Ritchie and Thomas, Sustainable Urban Design.
17 Kamp et al., “Urban Environment Quality and Human Well-Being”; Pacione, “Urban Environmental Quality and Human Well-Being.”
18 Brebbia, Hernandez, and Tiezzi, The Sustainable City.
19 UN, “World’s Population Increasingly Urban.”
20 Frank, “Reconstructing Antiquity. Interpreting Ancient Architecture.”
21 Bahadori, Mazidi, and Dehghani, “Experimental Investigation of New Designs of Wind Towers”; Fistola, “The Unsustainable City.”
22 Crouch and Mundigo, “The City Planning Ordinances.”
23 Ibid., 257.
24 Abercrombie, Greater London Plan; Ballon, The Greatest Grid; Hall and Tewdwr-Jones, Urban and Regional Planning; Kennedy, Planning the City upon a Hill; Mayer and Wade, Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis.
25 Perdue, Gostin, & Stone, “Public Health and the Built Environment,” iii.
26 Murphy Schlichting, “Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires,” 66.
27 Harney, “The Return of the Grid.”
28 Bridges, Map of the City of New York.
29 Willsher, “Haussmann Rips up Paris.”
30 Amann, Revolution and Mass Democracy; Willsher, “Haussmann Rips up Paris.”
31 McHarg, Design with Nature.
32 Friedmann and Hudson, “Knowledge and Action.”
33 Steiner, “Healing the earth.”
34 Ibid.,
35 Lutting, in Ren et al.
36 Webb, “The Use of Urban Climatology in Local Climate.”
37 Eliasson, “The Use of Climate Knowledge in Urban Planning.”
38 Gedikli, “Approaches to Climate Change.”
39 Ren, Ng, and Katzschner, “Urban Climatic Map Studies.
40 Erel, “The Application of Urban Climate Research in the Design of Cities.”
41 Ng, “Preface.”
42 Powell, Analizing a Historical Document.
43 Meteorological Service of Catalonia.
44 Gil and Olcina, Climatología General; Martín Vide, “Fundamentos de climatología analítica.”
45 Cerdà. Monografía Estadística de la Clase Obrera de 1856.
46 Pallares-Barbera, “Cerdà and Barcelona.”
47 Tort Donada, “Ildefonso Cerdà o las bases éticas del urbanismo.” Soria y Puig, Ildefonso Cerdà’s General Theory of Urbanization; Soria y Puig, Cerdà: The Five Bases of the General Theory of Urbanization. Laboratori d’Urbanisme de Barcelona, “Readings on Cerdà.”
48 Cerdà, Theory of Construction of the Cities, 376.
49 Ibid., 376, paragraph 1211.
50 Ibid., 376.
51 Cerdà, Memoria del Anteproyecto del Ensanche de Barcelona, 60.
52 Ibid., 64.
53 Cerdà, Theory of Construction of the Cities, 374.
54 Cerdà, Memoria del Anteproyecto del Ensanche de Barcelona, 60–61.
55 Cerdà, Teoría de la Construcción de las Ciudades, 406, paragraph 1460; 421, paragraph 1508.
Additional information
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Notes on contributors
Montserrat Pallares-Barbera
Montserrat Pallares-Barbera PhD in Geography, Boston University; Doctora en Geografía Ministry of Education and Science, Spain. Master of Arts and Sciences, Boston University. Bachelor Degree in Geography, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, (UAB). Professor of Geography, Geography Department, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Main areas of research: urban planning, health, economic geography and location. She is responsible for the Economic Geography Research Group (http://grupsderecerca.uab.cat/economicgeography/) and she is the PI of the project funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology (CSO2013-46863-C-3-2-R); and of the Quality Research Group Applied Geography (SGR2014-1090), Generalitat de Catalunya. Experience in transference, teaching and research can be found on: http://scholar.harvard.edu/montserrat-pallares-barbera/. Regarding administration, she was Vice Rector of Research, Deputy Dean and Secretary of the Faculty of Letters, UAB. She visited Harvard University. Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences. Center for Geographical Analysis, USA; Tottori University. Department of Social Systems Engineering, Japan. Boston University. Geography Department, and Clark University, Faculty of Geography, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Meritxell Gisbert
Meritxell Gisbert is adjunct Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and Universitat de Barcelona (UB) – Geography Department. Ph.D. in Geography at Universitat de Barcelona. Her research focuses on the use of GIS methods and techniques to analyze historical cartography, urban planning and environment. She has been teaching, and still does teach, GIS applied to archeology, smart cities, criminology, environment and urban planning at graduate and undergraduate students.
Anna Badia
Anna Badia is Associate Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Geography Department. PhD in Geography at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Currently, her research focuses in land use and land cover change and Geographic Information Systems in environment and urban planning. She usually teaches GIS applied in environment and urban planning at graduate and undergraduate courses. Articles, conferences and projects involved fully documented in this following page, https://portalrecerca.csuc.cat/orcid/0000-0001-9660-9811?locale=ca.