I was working on some research last semester and ran across something that I found to be incredibly interesting. At the time, I was preparing for a trip to Barcelona, so whenever I could use examples or data from that city, I did so.
Last time I checked, Barcelona is the most densely-built city in Western Europe - I think on the entire continent. Obviously, it blows every American city out of the water, even Manhattan. The graphic below illustrates Barcelona's land use pattern with that of Atlanta in 1990. Same population, 26x less land mass.
Both of these cities hosted the Olympics in the 1990's. Barcelona in '92 and Atlanta in '96. It is widely acknowledged that the the '92 Olympics helped propel Barcelona into the ranks of "global cities". I'm not sure if that argument can be made for Atlanta.
This is such an explicit example of how density affects cities. Barcelona is admired by many planners, urbanists, and yeah, ordinary people all over the world simply for its human energy and culture (among many other more concrete examples I'm not mentioning). Atlanta is often an example of how sprawl can choke a city; how to implement a failing public transit system, and the prime example of racial and income segregation.
So yes, I am proposing that if Atlanta would have even been able to control its growth as Barcelona has since it implemented its first land use plan, maybe Atlanta would be even more of a powerhouse than it is today and maybe would have avoided some of the social and environmental ills with which it is currently dealing.
On top of that. It's not just with public transit systems that the Europeans are more creative than many American cities. . . highways too! Ever thought of building a traffic circle into a bridge, over three levels of traffic? Catalan engineers did.
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