Aretian is proud to share key findings and recommendations from our latest report, “A Vision for Barcelona’s Future: City Science Illuminating Urban and Economic Development.” (download it here!) In this report, we identify the challenges faced by modern cities and offer strategic insights to overcome them using Aretian’s data-driven methodologies.
Our approach integrates quantifiable analysis with practical implementation strategies to transform urban challenges into growth opportunities. Here’s an overview of the challenges and recommendations and how Aretian can partner with you to address them in your projects and cities.
Urban Design
The Challenge: How can Barcelona’s urban layout accommodate 700,000 new residents in the Metropolitan Area by 2040?
Findings and Recommendations:
Improving Barcelona’s fractality to 75%—through targeted redesigns of streets, nodes, and amenities guided by Aretian’s data-driven analysis—can boost urban efficiency to 80%, reducing travel times, optimizing land and energy use, and fostering vibrant, accessible neighborhoods that drive economic and social growth.
Strategic urban design and activity programming can enhance social interactions up to sevenfold, fostering stronger community ties and boosting economic activity in public spaces.
Aretian can help quantify these challenges for your organization (from a small-scale development scale to regional!), simulate urban forms, and analyze social interaction metrics to align designs with your customized benchmarks. We can draft urban blueprints and program activity hubs and prioritize infrastructure investments for maximum impact.
Fractality Analysis for Barcelona
Economic Development
The Challenge: How can Barcelona double average wages and reduce unemployment by strengthening its smart specialization strategy to focus on high-value industries and resilient economic clusters?
Findings and Recommendations:
By identifying high-value industries from 848 globally standardized sectors, Barcelona can prioritize sectors with global competitiveness, strengthen value chains, and double average wages while lowering unemployment rates.
Expanding Barcelona’s innovative industries from 321 to 670 by 2040, with a focus on smart specialization, could generate an additional €65 billion in annual economic output.
Aretian can help assess your city’s industrial landscape and identify gaps or opportunities for growth through comparative analysis– designing actionable economic diversification plans, building private-public collaborations, and prioritizing sectors for strategic investment.
Innovation
The Challenge: How can Barcelona increase its knowledge economy from 14% to 20% by 2040 to remain competitive and identify strategic knowledge domains?
Findings and Recommendations:
Increasing knowledge-intensive jobs from 125,000 to 200,000 by 2040 would position Barcelona as a leader in 12 strategic knowledge domains, enhancing global competitiveness and fostering innovation-led growth.
Connecting 58 universities and research centers with 9,000 companies and 1,900 startups could accelerate tech transfer, boost innovation intensity, and generate significant economic and societal impact.
Aretian can help map knowledge networks and evaluate the effectiveness of current tech transfer mechanisms within your developments or regions by developing strategies to link academia, startups, and industries and design infrastructure to foster collaboration and innovation.
Amenity Analysis for Amsterdam
Mobility
The Challenge: How can Barcelona meet its mobility carbon goals by ensuring 80% of trips use sustainable modes—like public transit, cycling, walking, and low-emission vehicles—while improving connectivity and reducing suburban congestion?
Findings and Recommendations:
Aretian found that while Barcelona’s urban core already approaches 70% sustainable trips, the metropolitan region lags due to high car dependency. Targeted improvements in suburban transit links and last-mile connectivity could reduce private car use by 20-30% and significantly cut emissions.
Expanding public transit capacity, electrifying fleets, and enhancing multimodal connections—combined with investments in active travel infrastructure—could achieve 40-50% reductions in transport-related emissions while reducing suburban travel times by 30%.
Aretian’s predictive modeling evaluates mobility patterns and infrastructure gaps, estimating the potential impact of proposed interventions. Collaborate with us to design multimodal transit systems, optimize mobility corridors, and implement emissions-reducing mobility solutions!
Housing and Quality of Life
The Challenge: How can Barcelona project and plan for new residents, ensuring optimal location, integration with essential amenities, and alignment with sustainable growth patterns?
Findings and Recommendations:
Evidence-based planning for new housing would accommodate 700,000 residents, ensuring optimal density and accessibility while guiding €125 billion in investments over 20 years.
Integrating new housing with essential amenities—schools, healthcare, transit—can enhance the quality of life and create sustainable, well-connected communities across the metropolitan area.
Using Aretian’s new City Digital Twin platform, we can help you simulate housing needs, density thresholds, and amenity distributions to align with optimal urban growth patterns. Work with us to help draft data-driven zoning policies, identify priority areas for development, and create blueprints for integrating mixed-use, livable urban spaces.
Improve Your City Today!
Aretian’s methods are rooted in advanced city science modeling, complex systems analysis, and a proven track record of delivering actionable solutions. By combining our digital twin technologies with in-depth urban analytics, we provide tailored guidance that translates high-level strategies into measurable results.
Contact us today to discuss how we can partner with you to apply these insights to your city or project!