{"id":1407,"date":"2025-12-06T17:57:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T09:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/?p=1407"},"modified":"2025-12-06T18:01:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T10:01:08","slug":"lessons-from-barcelona-building-a-city-that-grows-like-a-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/archives\/1407","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from Barcelona: Building a City That Grows Like a Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u3010\u53ef\u6301\u7eed\u53d1\u5c55\u3011| Sustainability<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

For Sale<\/em><\/a><\/em><\/div>\n

By Valley,\u00a0\u00a0Jointing.Media, in Wuhan, 2025-07-19<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The urban grid of Barcelona, Spain, conceived in 1859, stands as a global model for sustainable planning. From above, its orderly octagonal blocks form a vast chessboard. This pioneering layout is considered a landmark of modern European urban planning and remains in use today due to its unique advantages.<\/p>\n

From the Cerd\u00e0 Grid to Superblocks: Inheritance and Evolution<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

From Smart City Pioneer to Citizen\u2011Tech\u2011Powered Urban Governance<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

The Planning Philosophy Reflecting the Mediterranean Cult of Public Life<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

\u3009\u3009Read the original article<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Editor’s Note:<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

What exactly are we talking about when we discuss cities in today’s world\u2014a world of hyper-connectivity yet also heightened anxiety? Are we referring to the skyward-climbing “forests” of skyscrapers, shimmering with the cold light of glass and steel? Or are we talking about the rapidly expanding grey blots on the map, encroaching upon and devouring mountains, rivers, and wetlands?<\/p>\n

The data offers a cold, stark alarm: the annual “creeping” expansion of global cities into ecologically fragile zones is swallowing hundreds of thousands of hectares of natural space. This is equivalent to over 140,000 football fields being erased from the Earth, leaving behind fragmented, isolated ruins of habitats. This encroachment, carried out in the name of “development,” exposes a deeply ingrained mindset\u2014one that views the city as a machine capable of infinite replication and\u00a0reckless\u00a0implantation anywhere.<\/p>\n

Looking inward, a profound “disconnect between knowledge and action” seems to pervade our urban narratives.<\/p>\n

Looking back along the river of history, ancient Chinese urban wisdom demonstrated remarkable foresight and resilience. The 108 meticulously planned wards of Sui and Tang Dynasty Chang’an, with their logic of modular management for efficiency, indeed share a similar spirit with Barcelona’s Cerd\u00e0 grid. Yet the more precious legacy lies in the resilient principles of moderation and functional balance embedded in texts like the\u00a0Kaogong Ji<\/em> (Artificers’ Record<\/em>), which advocated “the court in front, the market behind, each occupying one\u00a0fu<\/em> (unit).” Even more significant was the quiet revolution of Northern Song Dynasty Bianliang (modern Kaifeng)\u2014where ward walls crumbled, street markets flourished, and an open network was born,\u00a0taking the imperial way as its backbone and dense alleyways as its capillaries.<\/p>\n

However, pulling the lens back to the present reveals a different, disheartening scene. The past three decades of China\u2019s frenzied real estate development have left a complex legacy, including numerous \u201cvanity projects.\u201d These were often hastily launched under imperfect decision-making mechanisms, driven by the pursuit of short-term political achievement. Since 2015, we have seen a concentrated emergence of faux-antique \u201cancient towns,\u201d fantasy \u201ccharacteristic towns,\u201d and empty new districts and industrial parks. From the 540-million-yuan Yao-Han Yangshou City in Gongcheng, Guangxi, which rapidly became a ghost town, to the billion-yuan project in Xinye County, Henan, that was \u201crebuilt five times in three years,\u201d these sites\u2014alongside the single-function \u201cghost cities\u201d sprawling in the wilderness\u2014paint a picture of collective disregard for the laws of urban growth. They represent a mindset that reduces the city to a \u201cproject\u201d for quick completion, land to \u201ccapital\u201d for cashing out, and cultural heritage to a \u201clandscape\u201d for mass production. This model, in essence, shares the same simplistic, reckless, and unsustainable \u201clogic of expansion\u201d with the global urban \u201ccreep\u201d that shows disregard for ecology.<\/p>\n

What kind of cities do we truly need?<\/p>\n

The lesson from Barcelona may lie in its attempt to rediscover an urban philosophy of \u201cgrowing like a tree\u201d: roots digging deep into the soil of community and collective memory, branches and leaves adjusting towards the sun through democratic participation and technological empowerment. A truly smart city is not a \u201csuper-machine\u201d built from stacked technology, but a living organism capable of breathing, adapting, and healing.<\/p>\n

The story of the city will ultimately be the story of how we coexist with ourselves, with nature, and with time. It is time to change the way we tell it.<\/p>\n

Translated <\/em>by DeepSeek<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Edited by Jas<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Related:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Green Wisdom in Ancient Chinese Architecture: Passive Cooling Strategies for Summer Heat Mitigation<\/a><\/h3>\n

More>><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u3010\u53ef\u6301\u7eed\u53d1\u5c55\u3011| Sustainability For Sale By Valley,\u00a0\u00a0Jointing.Media, in Wuhan, 2025-07-19 The urban grid of Barcelona, Spain, conceived in 1859, stands as a global model for sustainable planning. From above, its orderly octagonal blocks form a vast chessboard. This pioneering layout is considered a landmark of modern European urban planning and remains in use today due to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-city","category-csr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1407"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}