Barcelona launches 10-year plan to reclaim city streets from cars

Plans include making one in three Eixample streets green zones" and creating 21 public squares

Barcelona has launched an ambitious 10-year plan to reclaim the city's streets from cars and cut down pollution with the creation of green spaces and public squares.

One in three streets in the heavily polluted central Eixample district - the 20th-century grid devised by the engineer Ildefons Cerda - will become green zones under the scheme, giving priority to pedestrians and cyclists, and 21 public squares will be created at intersections so that no citizen is more than 200 metres from a square or small park.