Ramon Gras Alomà, Aretian’s co-founder, was recently interviewed by journalist Lídia Heredia at TV3.cat, the reference TV channel in Barcelona and broader Catalunya about the future of Urbanism, City Science and Urban Design. During this interview, he described the importance of Aretian’s mission, the creation of a new Science of Cities, that aims at improving how cities are thought, planned, built and organized; a science based on the contribution to urbanism of Ildefons Cerdà. He explains that urban design has a paramount role in shaping the quality of life, economic development, access to amenities, economic opportunities and egalitarian access to services. Through this new City Science, it is possible to inform better quality of urban design interventions to create better communities and societies throughout the World.
You can watch the interview in Catalan here: https://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/els-matins/lurbanisme-del-futur/video/6082796/
On top of the Urbanism of the Future, Ramon describes that Aretian developed new research based on the emerging concept of the 15-minute city, an ideal city in which all necessary amenities, workplace and living areas are within 15 minutes of travel distance by foot. Aretian also developed a theory on the 10 different types of major cities in a scientific paper for La Sorbonne, the famous Parisian University. Ramon mentions that Barcelona is considered in this model as a fractal city, which tends to present high urban performance results in terms of both value creation and capturing. Its main strategic advantage relies on its nested hierarchy, enabling both a relatively even distribution of services with activity hubs.