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New Publication Explores Proximity, Amenities and Housing Affordability in Mediterranean 15-Minute Cities
A new article by Pablo Villar-Abeijón, Carme Miralles-Guasch and Oriol Marquet has been published in Cities. The paper, titled “The impact of proximity to amenities on housing affordability: Insights from Mediterranean 15-minute cities”, examines how access to everyday amenities relates to rental prices in Barcelona, Valencia, Palma and Granada.Read more about the publication here. The
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New Publication Examines the Commercial Effects of Pedestrianisation in Barcelona
A new article by Pablo Villar-Abeijón, Carme Miralles-Guasch and Oriol Marquet has been published in Applied Geography. The paper, titled “The effects of pedestrianization on commercial dynamics: A quasi-experimental study in Barcelona”, examines how pedestrianization affects local commercial activity and retail change. The study contributes to ATRAPA’s broader interest in the social and economic consequences
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The ATRAPA team enters a new phase
The ATRAPA project has entered a new phase with a consolidated research team working across its different work packages on policy acceptability, opposition, backlash, spatial analysis, surveys, electoral outcomes, and the social impacts of urban transformation. The current ATRAPA research team brings together senior, postdoctoral and predoctoral researchers from GEMOTT and UAB. The postdoctoral team
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ATRAPA Methodological Exchange at Frankfurt’s SET-Mobility Lab
Oriol Marquet visited the Frankfurt Lab for Social-Ecological Transformation of Urban Mobility (SET-Mobility), where on 28 January 2026 he delivered a lecture on the methodological challenges of measuring public acceptability of public policies. The lecture presented ongoing work from the ATRAPA project and discussed different methodological strategies to study opposition, backlash and support for transformative
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ATRAPA at mobile.TUM 2025: Presenting Insights on Urban Policy Acceptability
ATRAPA researchers took part in mobile.TUM 2025 in Singapore (24 Nov – 26 Nov 2025), where Oriol Marquet and Monika Maciejewska showcased the recent findings from the project. The presentation focused on results from the Barcelona urban policy acceptability survey, which examines public perceptions of sustainable urban transformation policies such as Superblocks, bike lanes, pedestrianizations
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ATRAPA Strengthens International Research Exchange Through Visits and Seminars
International research exchange is becoming an increasingly important part of ATRAPA’s work. The project has hosted visiting researchers and seminars focused on public acceptability, street-space reallocation and the political dimensions of sustainable mobility policies. As part of this exchange, Simone Aumann, from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), joined GEMOTT for a three-month research stay.
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New ATRAPA survey explores who supports or rejects Barcelona’s urban transformations
We have launched a new ATRAPA survey, reaching 2,000 residents across Barcelona and its metropolitan area. This comprehensive questionnaire aims to uncover detailed insights into public perceptions and responses regarding key sustainable urban transformation initiatives, including Superblocks, bike lanes, pedestrianizations, and protected school environments. With the data collection now complete -featuring 1,500 responses from Barcelona
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Building an Urban Transformation Index, updates on WP1
WP1 of the ATRAPA project is in full swing, with data collection across the 7 project cities advancing in parallel. This part of the project focuses on collecting and preparing data to assess urban transformations across: Barcelona, Milan, Ljubljana, Warsaw, Utrecht, Malmö, and Paris (Figure 1). The main goal of WP1 is to build an
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New findings on electoral reactions to sustainable urban interventions
Workpackage 3 of the ATRAPA project has achieved significant progress, using Barcelona as a pilot case to examine how sustainable urban transformations affect political support for implementing parties. Two recent papers published by our team in Cities and in Environment International have analyzed this electoral dimension at the local level, employing a range of methods
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The ATRAPA project making progress on the links between urban transformations and gentrification
In our ongoing efforts to understand public reactions to urban transformations, the ATRAPA project team has identified fears of gentrification as a key reason behind resistance to these changes. Adding to this exploration, Pablo Villar-Abeijon latest research offers new insights by directly investigating whether pedestrianization projects in Barcelona have led to signs of gentrification. Pablo’s