Sea Gateways – La Ciutadella
The main objective of the Sea Gateways projects is to improve accessibility and connection to the sea on foot and by bicycle, to create spaces for sea-city interrelation through the main vertebral thoroughfares and secondary transversal corridors capable of linking the spaces of the city with the spaces of the coast, and proposing, if necessary, a new arrangement of the open spaces that facilitates physical and visual access to the sea.
The urban fabric of Barcelona, from Montjuïc to Besòs, is characterised by streets that go all the way to the seafront, although there is only a continuity of road traffic, as the ring road and railway lines act as a barrier. There is a lack of transversal links (mountain-sea) that connect the city to the coast, on foot and by bike. The main theme is to give continuity and fluidity to the “vertical” routes with the “horizontal” routes of the coastal corridor, addressing above all the crossroads and the points of contact and intersection between the two routes. It is a case of making the public space for movement and relaxation as continuous and easily accessible as possible. The rationale of these projects is to physically determine and signpost the routes of public spaces, accessible on foot or by bicycle, that lead from the city to the sea and vice versa.
The main objective of the La Ciutadella Sea Gateway project is to provide the urban areas surrounding La Ciutadella park access to the sea and the promenade. This will help to solve the serious lack of walking and cycling space between the park and the public spaces along the seafront. There will also be improved accessibility and connectivity through a new layout of the spaces in order to overcome, in the medium and long term, the barriers that currently separate part of the city from the sea. The idea is to rethink the Parc de la Ciutadella not so much as an enclosure, but as a ring: to open up the park to the city and the sea in order to improve the relationship between neighbourhoods and the urban fabric around the park, and thus recover the park’s cross-cutting connection to the sea.
