New energies, new networks, new spatial forms, new urban landscapes? The smart grid and waste/water networks put to the test in the sustainable 22@ district of Barcelona[Nouvelles énergies, nouveaux réseaux, nouvelles formes spatiales, nouveaux paysages urbains ? La smart grid et réseaux de déchets/hydrauliques à l’épreuve dans le quartier durable 22@ de Barcelone]

The smart grid is a name for an intelligent electricity distribution network using computer technologies and infrastructure for the redistribution, regulation and production of energy on a local scale so as to optimize production and distribution to allow better relationship between supply and demand, producers/consumers of electricity. The objective is to offer sustainable neighborhoods new contributions in IT technologies leading to energy savings, security of the network and reduction of costs. This sustainable initiative meets the demands of municipalities wanting to invest in networks that comply with the requirements of international treaties allowing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. However, these new intelligent energy networks are increasingly superimposed or planned on waste management, fiber communication and city water treatment networks. All of this new urban architecture, which is mostly underground, orders and designs a new urban landscape beyond the horizon while shaping new contemporary public spaces. This is the subject of our research and presentation of new results through a study site, Barcelona and its sustainable district 22@. What are the effects of these networking techniques on the urban landscape of a Mediterranean city? Our analysis focuses on the consequences of underground urban planning on the appearance of the so-called increasingly sustainable street, on the liberation or confiscation of public spaces through the intrusion of new energy relays or network management and finally the capacity to play between minerality and plants to hide, reveal or bury its networks. We have as a source for this study a documentary corpus in the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic languages, including in particular the work of the Siemens group, in situ research and photographic reports of Barcelona's heavy infrastructures to create new spatial forms. We couple this academic research with interviews with technicians and drawings of so-called intelligent streets and neighborhoods bringing out new perspectives, focal points and meetings demonstrating the achievement of a new urbanity in construction, management and so-called efficient operation. The consequences are numerous on an urban planning level: usefulness in saving space on the roads, on the better readability of the urban landscape (e.g. buried trash), long-term operating quality/price ratio for the creation of a sustainable neighborhood experimental in more than one way and above all a driving force behind a new ecological approach to the city and its performance imperatives. However, risks of competition between networks and poor upstream planning can occur, such as for waste collection or urban marketing through the installation of wind turbines on the roofs of skyscrapers. A sustainable urban landscape is built step by step and with reflexivity and constant evaluation, further proof of a sustainable technique addressing ongoing criticism.