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Renovation of Paseo de la Independencia
from Cities & Rivers
Paseo de la Independencia is one of the main public spaces in Zaragoza, capital of the autonomous community of Aragón, in Spain. Its path begins in Plaza de España and ends in Plaza de Basilio Paraíso, crossing Plaza de Aragón and defining the first of the city’s enlargements with its layout. Its origins date back to the early 19th century, during the French occupation of the city, but it was not until 1870 that the avenue was fully defined with the addition of a tree-lined central walkway and sidewalks on each side. In the early 1970s, the first large-scale modification of the space took place: the original central walkway was eliminated, resulting in the space being overwhelmingly occupied by vehicle traffic, across 12 lanes.
The new social sensitivity favoring pedestrian spaces and the reduced need for surfaces reserved for vehicle traffic gave way to the second transformation of Paseo de la Independencia, approximately 40 years later. The proportions of spaces allocated for pedestrians and vehicles were inverted, doubling the amount of surface area for pedestrians and cutting the number of lanes for vehicle traffic in half: two loading lanes, two lanes for private vehicles and two lanes for the future tramway. The Paseo recovered its role as a symbolic social space and a place for social demonstrations, traditional celebrations or protests.
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Criteria for the establishment of predominance of
Pedestrian Mobility
To recover pedestrian space and ensure pedestrians have priority at building entrances and on sidewalks, the design incorporates a significant urban transformation. It centers on the generation of a strict continuity for pedestrian surfaces from one end to the other of each square – consolidating surfaces as opposed to breaking them up – and guaranteeing leveled paving surfaces. The cross streets will have limited access only from the Paseo and across the sidewalk, in a strategy that serves as the first phase toward more generalized pedestrianization. As for the central section, vehicle traffic will be reduced from 12 to six lanes, doubling the area reserved for pedestrians. The central lanes will also be more permeable to pedestrian traffic, with more frequent crosswalks designed with a treatment that links the sidewalks on either side. Moreover, the vehicle circulation routes are dependent on the urban geometry of the city, rather than the turning radius and the presumed optimum layouts for traffic fluidity.
The definitive design will generate two broad tree-lined sidewalks with a cross-section comparable to a traditional French boulevard, recovering the existing monuments at each end of the axis for pedestrian use, preventing them from standing neglected on small islands amid the traffic. Finally, a new unique space is formalized, inserted between the two squares, based on the archaeological remains of the Muslim neighborhood of Sinhaya, which will be evoked by a platform connecting the two sidewalks, interrupting the continuity of the asphalt.