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Frame from Superblocks: How Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Superblocks: How Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

18 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
Cited on HN 3 times, 2017–2024, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Cited as an example of reducing car dominance and as a model for walkable neighborhoods.

A short Vox video on Barcelona's superblocks, an urban design approach that closes interior streets to through traffic to return space to pedestrians.

3 citations · Explainers · partly dated

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@sreenadh May 2017 Cites it
on HN thread India plans massive shift to electric cars
I believe that India has to leapfrog the whole car obsession and move over to an effective and extensive public transportation and make cities more “superblocks" like in Barcelona ( [this video] ). Adam ruins Cars ( [link] ) is a rather informative piece you should watch.
Example of Barcelona superblocks reducing car dominance.
@IlegCowcat Jun 2019 Cites it
on HN thread Superblocks: Barcelona’s plan to take back streets from cars
Ahh this is a new article from 2019. I remember the 2016 Vox video when they were putting in the first Superblocks. [this video] Good to see Barcelona is going ahead with the Superblocks. Found a 2018 video by those great Streetfilms folks: [link]
Earlier video on the first Barcelona superblocks.
@toomuchtodo Dec 2024 Cites it
on HN thread South Korea's population faces point of no return
Read more
I think there is a potential, limited path to success here (depending on what "success" looks like), and it’s likely assisting parents in clustering (via subsidizing moving expenses and affordable family housing) around schools that remain (because many are closing due to funding cuts and the demographic cliff) to maintain walkability for both school commute and socialization. It’s a bandaid, but the only option I see viable considering the cost of re-engineering urban planning to fix decades of car centric policy. Those costs are enormous, and I think in a lot of cases, it’ll be cheaper to allow some places to go terminal/fallow as their population declines. This doesn’t juice the fertility rate (because it doesn't appear anything will), but it will make childhoods suck less for kids already here and those on the way for the foreseeable future (as well as improve parental experience). Barcelona Superblocks is my mental model on this topic. [link] [this video]
Barcelona Superblocks as mental model for walkable family neighborhoods.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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