ICLEI Member Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque country) recently hosted other European cities to share its successful implementation of ‘superblocks’ and how the city has used these areas to foster sustainable urban mobility.

The city began to work on its first Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) in 2006. An important component of the SUMP was its aim to transform public spaces into pleasant environments for people to enjoy and for social interactions to take place.

As part of this plan, the city developed an approach for redesigning neighbourhoods in line with the ‘superblock’ concept. A superblock is an innovation that reorganises urban space to support low-carbon mobility practices. In Vitoria-Gasteiz, private cars and various forms of public transportation are kept out of these blocks, and inner streets are redesigned to be pedestrian- and bike-friendly.

The city has been divided into 77 potential superblocks. Two of these blocks have been completed, and traffic-calming interventions have been implemented in 17 others.

Juan Carlos Escudero, Head of Information and Innovation for the Urban Sustainability Unit of Vitoria-Gasteiz’s Environmental Studies Centre, highlights that, as a result of this initiative, “the situation for mobility and the local environment has improved a lot. And, what is more important is that the people are enjoying it.” Local benefits include having more attractive pedestrian areas, doubling the number of public transportation users, and reducing private car use by more than 12 percent in the last decade.

Vitoria-Gasteiz recently shared its successful use of superblocks with other European cities as part of the ‘SMARTEES’ project. SMARTEES is a research project that aims to support cities’ energy transitions and improve policy design by examining five types of energy- and mobility-related local social innovations. Participants in the SMARTEES city visit included ICLEI Members Lisbon (Portugal) and Zagreb (Croatia), as well as A Coruña (Spain) and Porto (Portugal).

The SMARTEES project has launched a video highlighting the insights of the visit.

To learn more about Vitoria-Gasteiz's superblocks and the SMARTEES city visit, click here.