"...steps that provided seating for gatherers have now been filled with plant boxes"

This is the real tragedy, since it is a change that doesn't apply only at night. It makes the square less valuable to people 24 hours a day.

It makes it less valuable to transients, and more valuable to the residents.

Transients and anybody who would like to be outside in the square, including residents who live near the square, but it's not like it's "their" square. It isn't a Costco parking lot in Fort Worth, it's a square in Barcelona. The whole point of it is to be an outdoor public space where people can congregate and enjoy themselves.

> The whole point of it is to be an outdoor public space where people can congregate and enjoy themselves.

People can! Following the law and how it relates to noise pollution. Rights are a balance.

Disclaimer: US citizen who has spent more than a few weeks in Barcelona, and has seen how people abuse the commons firsthand

> US citizen who has spent more than a few weeks in Barcelona ... seen how people abuse the commons firsthand

Aside from breaking the law, how does one abuse a common area?

Not implying this is what you’re saying, but I’ll never understand people who try to imply commons areas should only exist for the whims of certain classes of people.

I lived near a park in Minneapolis a few years back and one of my obnoxious neighbors were trying to get laws passed to change park rules because they didn’t like the large “poor looking” family who had a weekly cookout in the park on Sundays. She tried so hard to rally the neighborhood into joining her quest...

I kept asking her, “If you don’t like public areas, if you want to control who uses what and how they use it, why on earth would you move into a densely populated area, directly across the street from a public park?” I mean, it was a fairly pricey neighborhood so she had options, I’ll never understand why she didn’t move into one of those suburban neighborhoods with a homeowners association— those are tailor made for people who want to micromanage others and can’t handle living amongst the public. Like, stay out of cities if you’re this type of person...

Well, they can't, not on those steps, even if they are quiet as a fly in the middle of the day. That was the CamTin's point.

Must you be on the steps to enjoy the square?

"Here's a flat paved plaza. You cannot sit down. The cops will be by to kick you out at 11."

Sure, sounds like a lot of fun.

I don’t see be problem. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing.

Considering the Catalan like to eat dinner late, around 8-10PM. An after dinner stroll to the park is now out of the question. Could it be quieter, certainly. There is a technology available to help. Put up leafy trees or a large canvas canopy to muffle the noise.

Yes, it is a cultural thing.

Squares and parks are supposed to have people meeting and using the public space, not for making a space prettier or as a just a transient area, if that was the case then pedestrian streets would be better to make it denser while having the same features of meeting and traffic.

Benches, chairs, steps are necessary so people can sit relatively comfortably for some time while doing other activities, I don't understand how a flat, paved square is a good thing except for displaying flower beds.

Probably it is. I guess, in many parts of Europe, we're used to city space being usable by everyone for recreation, without wondering who owns any particular stretch of land and whether they'll want to kick us out.

Alas, this seems to be disappearing here too; cities are importing the strange habits of gated off neighbourhoods, and giving every possible public space to private owners, who destroy its utility by trying to make money off it.

Yeah, Americans really don’t like spending time in public spaces unless each person is individually enclosed in a hermetically sealed metal box on wheels.

As a result, places where humans regularly talk to each-other in public freak us out. Why won’t they stop abusing the commons like that?