Urban Challenge: Seeking the 21st Century New Panot, the Iconic Barcelona Paving
This Project Showcase is part of the Community Voting, vote here for your favorite session.
Barcelona has committed to be a NetZero City by 2030. Construction is responsible for almost a quarter of all air pollution on the planet. At the same time, the pavement of Barcelona has maintained its same recipe since 1905.
So in 2022 Barcelona City Council, through BIT Habitat, launched a challenge to seek a new pavement (Panot) that preserved the iconic design but was more aligned in its fabrication, installation and management with the climate emergency framework needs.
The awarded solutions had to lower environmental impact and heat island effect, increase permeability, extend their life cycle, and demonstrate those increased features during the prototyping process and monitoring the impacts on the real environment: the street. Winner proposals received a grant to co-finance 80% of the total cost.
The key element of that is the public purpose methodology: Administration becomes an active agent in shaping the market, investing in innovation but promoting the generation of the common good. Adopting the “”urban challenge”” methodology allowed finding a solution that didn’t exist in the market before, ensuring that all the information generated is open to guarantee its scalability through the public procurement processes. Both public and private share the risk and revenues of the innovation process.
Therefore, the “creative bureaucracy” approach consists of designing an administrative procedure to accelerate innovation and ensure the achievement of these ambitious goals.
This session is part of the “Delivering Collective Impact” block, which runs from 16:30-17:15 CET. The sessions in this block will appear in the following order:
· E.I.T.A! Recife – Solving Major Public Challenges Through Open Innovation
· Urban Challenge: Seeking the 21st Century New Panot, the Iconic Barcelona Paving
· Safecity: A Crowdmap For Sexual and Gender-Based Violence
· Life Project: Humanized Care for Cases of Attempted Suicide
· Cities in Placemaking: Peer-Learning for Better Public Places
Isabella Longo
Projects Director, BIT Habitat, Urban Innovation Agency of Barcelona City Council