URBAN QUALITY, MOBILITY, LIFE QUALITY: A GRAMMAR FOR THE RENAISSANCE OF THE CITY. A PROPOSAL FOR THE NEW “BARRIO DE LA INDUSTRIA” IN SANT ADRIÀ DE BESÒS, BARCELONA.

A strict connection exists between mobility patterns and urban quality. The cities that throughout time gave priority to public transport, bicycles and pedestrians against the use of private car are those which today are characterized by a higher urban and life quality. Nevertheless, most of contemporary cities grew according to the model of “spread metropolis” generating suburbs that eluded, more or less consciously, the monitoring of the authorities, in which public space, dominated by the automobile, totally lost his role of "urban reinforcement" and where the criteria of urban quality have been almost completely left aside. Nowadays mobility planning represents an effective instrument for urban regeneration. Taking a cue from a hypothesis drafted by the Italian urban planner Marcello Vittorini in 1988, a "grammar" was formulated through the development of a "theoretical grid" that aims also to rearrange the settings of urban mobility in order to regenerate and retrain the city. Considering the city of Barcelona, where interventions that have some similarities with the theoretical grid have already been implemented (supermanzana), it was decided to test the "Theoretical grid" identifying a possible strategy of intervention on an ex-industrial area of about 4 km2 in the municipality of S. Adria de Besos (Metropolitan Area of Barcelona), with the aim of mending that urban fragment and reconnect it to the fabric of the consolidated city.