Reclaiming the streets: the architects clawing back Europe’s car-centric spaces

The European Prize for Urban Public Space’s shortlist highlights projects helping people cope with climate crisis

• BY Philip Oltermann / The Guardian

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In the words of Joni Mitchell, the planners of many urban centers around the world “paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” The European Prize for Urban Public Space tries to show that cities don’t have to be locked in the automotive age for ever.

The prize’s latest shortlist, announced yesterday, highlights architectural projects that convert infrastructure for cars into spaces that help urban dwellers cope with the soaring temperatures of the climate crisis: roundabouts that have become splash pools, thoroughfares turned into green havens, and car parks into gardens.

Among the most eye-catching of the five finalists is Leopold Banchini’s Round About Baths in Logrono, northern Spain. The Swiss architect’s project sought to revive what he called a “lost space” on one of the main thoroughfares in the city, a concrete island with a broken fountain.

A woman with a helmet last month rides an electric scooter past traffic on a street of Paris.

Photo: AFP

Inspired by 19th-century public baths, Banchini’s studio used uncut timber panels to build and place a simple structure directly on to the fountain. The existing water basin became a shallow pool, while cast-iron flower pots were repurposed as fire bowls that heat a steam room.

“We have given up so much public space to cars, and if you live in a city with kids you live in constant fear that they will be hit by a passing vehicle,” Banchini said. “It restricts our movement so much that we almost can’t see it anymore.”

Those trying to catch a glimpse of the roundabout baths in situ will be disappointed, however: Banchini’s structure was only erected for a week as part of the city’s Concentrico architecture festival in June last year — inadvertently showing how difficult it is to permanently alter car-centric infrastructure.

“If we had built something more permanent, we would have had to engage with safety concerns”, said Banchini, noting that bathers were only able to access the roundabout via a zebra crossing on one side.

“The rules around car traffic are hard to modify, and any requests usually go all the way up to municipal authorities”, he added. “And politicians are really scared to touch anything with cars, because they fear it will cost them in votes.”

The creators of another Spanish finalist, Barcelona’s Placa de les Glories Catalanes, were more successful: the three thoroughfares that used to bring traffic into the Glories cloverleaf interchange were partly laid underground to make room for open green space.

Antwerp’s Zuidpark is the result of a similar attempt to banish cars from cityscapes. Located in the southern Zuid district of the Belgian city, the 800-meter green space covers an area that used to be taken up by a large free car park.

In 2015, municipal authorities launched a competition for a public space to fill the site.

“I have done projects like this for 25 years, but this park had to be completely different to anything we’ve done before, and that’s because of the climate issue,” said Bart Van Gassen of Tractebel, the urban architecture company that won the commission.

The firm decided to excavate 70 percent of the new park’s area and put in place a 1.5-meter top layer of soil that would allow trees and bushes to grow more rapidly. Two years after its opening in 2024, Zuidpark is lined by double rows of 500 new trees that provide shade during heatwaves.

“The planting is really booming,” said Van Gassen. “We have projects we constructed 10 years ago and the trees are still smaller than here.” He said recent research by the University of Antwerp showed there were significantly lower temperatures inside the park than elsewhere in the city.

Climate breakdown is bringing not just waves of intense heat but also extreme precipitation, which Zuidpark seeks to anticipate with lowered spaces, called “rain gardens”, designed to collect rainwater. Filled with old bluestone blocks unearthed during construction and vegetation that can grow in a wet environment, these wilder spaces have become popular play areas for children.

Still, the cars haven’t vanished altogether: a new car park, no longer free, is now positioned across four storys underneath Zuidpark’s northern and southern wings, and can be accessed from entry points outside the park.

“You could be critical because it’s still a car park with 2,000 spaces that is very close to the city,” said Van Gassen. “If you’re thinking sustainably, maybe it should have been built more outside of the city. But then, maybe if there was no parking we wouldn’t have been able to build a park at all.”

Also on the shortlist for the prize, which is held every two years, are the Leca Green Corridor in northwest Portugal and Peace Park in Vicenza, Italy.

The winner of the award, organized by Spain’s Center de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona with six other European architecture institutions, will be announced on 15 October.