Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

After months of analysing the city's public spaces, Barcelona City Council has launched Cuidem Barcelona [Looking After Barcelona], a new comprehensive maintenance plan for public spaces which, from now until 2023, will make it possible to intensify cleaning and maintenance of public spaces and urban features in order to resolve any incidents identified and to improve the condition of public spaces and how they are perceived.

The comprehensive maintenance plan involves an investment of €70 million, which will be used to introduce improvements in the cleaning and maintenance of streets, squares and parks in certain areas of Barcelona's ten districts. The plan will be operational from October 2021 to 2023 and it involves short and medium-term actions that will also be accompanied by the implementation of a new cleaning contract for the city, starting in 2022.

For this reason, we have launched an action plan in order to intensify cleaning from this point onwards. The plan is called Cuidem Barcelona [Looking After Barcelona] and it has a record extraordinary budget of €70 million. Some of the actions that we have started to introduce with this action plan include:

• Intensifying cleaning operations in 350 hotspots identified by local residents
• Launching 8 morning and afternoon teams exclusively dedicated to the #CuidemBCN plan
• More cleaning with high-pressure water hoses
• More cleaning of spray paint, graffiti, stickers, chewing gum, paper, etc.
• Cleaning the outside of rubbish containers
• Renovating items of urban furniture
• Surfacing a total of 24,774 square metres

The comprehensive cleaning operations will begin in October at the following locations:

• Ciutat Vella: Pou de la Figuera and surrounding area
• L’Eixample: the area around Mercat de Sant Antoni, Carrer de Manso and Carrer del Parlament
• Sants-Montjuïc: Plaça de Santa Madrona
• Les Corts: the area around Mercat de les Corts
• Sarrià - Sant Gervasi: Plaça de Sant Vicenç de Sarrià
• Gràcia: Riera de Sant Miquel and adjacent streets
• Horta-Guinardó: Plaça de Pastrana
• Nou Barris: Plaça Roja and surrounding area
• Sant Andreu: Plaça de la Trinitat
• Sant Martí: Rambla del Poblenou at the junction with Carrer del Doctor Trueta

From March 2022, other measures will be introduced, with the aim of improving people’s perception of the city's public spaces. The main operations will be as follows:

• Improving communication channels with the general public. Streamlining and reinforcing the three channels used by local residents to notify the City Council of incidents. The following are available to city residents:
  • The barcelona.cat/incidencies-espai-public website
  • The Barcelona a la butxaca app
  • The free 900 226 226 helpline
• Operations on city greenery, with reinforced maintenance of greenery and planting trees to avoid empty tree pits. Introducing specific maintenance in dog exercise areas, vertical gardens and green drainage areas (SUDS).
• Signage operations: the repainting and comprehensive renovation of the city's horizontal signage.
• In regard to surfaces and urban furniture, there will be a comprehensive renovation of surfacing, benches and other urban elements in 80 areas of the city's 10 districts.
• Continuing with the maintenance and improvement operations on the sewer system in Barceloneta and Poblenou.
• Improvement and restoration of artistic heritage in public spaces.

In March 2022, a new cleaning contract will be implemented, the biggest in the city —around 10% of the municipal budget— which will provide for an increase in the number of staff for cleaning and collecting waste, as well as the inclusion of new machinery so that we can respond more readily to the needs of every city neighbourhood.