Basilica, technically. As I understand it you can only have one cathedral per city, for some bureaucratic and / or religious reason, and Barcelona already had one. 🤷♂️
Hmm, interesting, I thought a basilica was an additional designation for a cathedral, I didn't know they could be stand alone. But I think you can only have one cathedral per bishop?
The one going straight to the basilica is Gaudí Avenue, named after Antoni Gaudí, the architect who designed the Sagrada Família (as well as other landmarks like Park Güell, Casa Milà / La Pedrera, or Casa Batlló); it was designed to connect the two landmarks of the Sagrada Família and the former Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (today a UNESCO world heritage site).
The one in the background is Diagonal Avenue (no, really), one of the main thoroughfares in the city, intended by Ildefons Cerdà (designer of the Eixample) to cut through his grid layout together with Meridiana Avenue (which roughly follows the Paris meridian, or rather the Barcelona-Dunkerke one; there's also the perpendicular Paral·lel Avenue, of course, though sadly they don't cross), crossing at the Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, which Cerdà intended to become the new city centre (alas, the Plaça Catalunya, some 17 blocks to the south, ended up taking that role).
From Cities Skylines experience it's usually to relieve traffic blocks by providing a direct path to areas/landmarks that have a higher than average traffic load. Not sure why they did it though.
I can't tell if they are actual streets, pedestrian-only areas, or bus loading/unloading zones. There look to be structures along them that could be market booths or buses.
That's if you mean the two blocks with the diagonals going through them. If you mean the one in the back that's slightly off-angle from the grid, my guess for that is that the road existed before the modern city did and wasn't removed to create the grid. Or it might be a rail line.
If you mean the one in the back that's slightly off-angle from the grid, my guess for that is that the road existed before the modern city did and wasn't removed to create the grid. Or it might be a rail line.
Nope, that's Diagonal Avenue, one of the cities main thoroughfares; it was part of the original design of the Eixample, intended to break the monotony of the grid, together with the north-south Meridiana Avenue.
Is this the whole city or just the same poster neighborhood again and again? I can't imagine the ancients having the same building codes for wage earners as they do now.
I can't imagine the ancients having the same building codes for wage earners as they do now
Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, and other Indus valley civilization cities had grid layouts 4,600 years ago; Egypt used grid layouts around the same time; Babylon, 15th century BCE China, classical Greece and Rome, Teotihuacan... turns out that grid layouts have been the go-to for planned cities pretty much since people came up with the idea of planning cities. 🤷♂️
On the sidewalks; hard to see in that light, and the picture might have been taken in autumn or winter, but I replied elsewhere in the thread with a picture showing how many of them there actually are (or just look up pictures with the keyword “eixample” and you'll find there's actually quite a bit of green between the blocks).
(And also parks, of course; there's two of them in the picture right next to the basilica, but, again, in this yellow light you can't see the green.)
Damn they still didn't finish building that monstrosity?
I'm kidding, the interior is the most breathtaking space I've encountered. But man it is fuck ugly from the outside, does not fit in with the scenery at all, and is as gaudy as it is Gaudi.