Ideas That Happen - How Barcelona is designing its streets for health & happiness

“We are the only animals which build habitats that harm us.”

We recently sat down with Eloi Juvillà, Director of Building and Logistics at the Barcelona Provincial Council, to learn how Barcelona is rethinking city design for healthy urban living.

Together with Marta Rofin Serrà, head of Healthy Cities, we discussed:

🚗 How economy and car-centred thinking has made health an afterthought when designing cities – habitat and home to over 75% of Europe’s population – contributing to thousands of preventable deaths

⛑ How Barcelona is leading a growing movement of cities putting the health of citizens first when planning new or regenerated areas of a city

🏙 How Barcelona’s La Industrial+ regeneration project offers a real life example of health-driven planning leading the way to healthier outcomes

No time to watch? Listen to the podcast:

This episode marks the launch of our new video series, Ideas That Happen.

Over the coming months we’re excited to bring you insights from the practitioners turning transformational ideas into real improvement projects for Europe.

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#HealthyCities #Barcelona #IdeasThatHappen

00:00 Welcome to Ideas That Happen
00:20 Introduction to the healthy cities concept
02:22 How did you get interested in healthy cities?
04:25 What is a healthy city?
06:25 How planning forgot people
07:41 Health is more than hospitals
09:03 What is Barcelona's Industrial Suma?
12:15 How do you design a city for health?
13:24 What's healthier - sports facilities or green spaces?
14:50 How do tell citizens about healthy cities?
21:11 Small scale healthy planning
21:54 What are the challenges of healthy city planning?
23:26 The Healthy Cities Generator tool
24:43 What's next?