The AESOP 2024 Conference held in Paris, July 8 – 12, witnessed the presentation of some of the first results of the ATRAPA project. Oriol Marquet and Monika Maciejewska presented their work at the Mobility Track during a session entitled Streets and Conflicts, with the participation of other European colleagues. The researchers held their presentation on “Fighting For Proximity: Acceptance, Opposition, And Political Outcomes Of Barcelona’s Superblocks”, revealing that Superblock-intervened areas of the city manifested stronger electoral support during the 2023 elections for Barcelona en Comú (BeC), the incumbent Mayor’s party, even in a context where party support at city level showed a general decline.
During a session held at the Housing Track of the congress, Pablo Villar shared his research on “The 15-Minute City And Housing Affordability. Insights From The Spanish Cities Of Barcelona, Valencia, Palma And Granada”. His work explored the relationship between proximity to everyday services and activities and renting housing prices in Mediterranean cities. The study revealed a non-linear relationship between proximity and prices, with proximity generally positively valued, as well as spatial differences between poly-centric and mono-centric cities.
The AESOP conference gathered hundreds of urban planners from all over the world and was the perfect occasion for the ATRAPA team to show the first insights of their investigations on using electoral data to understand residents’ acceptability of transformative policies.