BSP Urban Mobility Seminars: Decoding Media Framing and Political Discourse

Urban planners are increasingly promoting superblocks and low-traffic neighbourhoods as models for sustainable urban change. However, public acceptance of these initiatives remains contentious, with protests and political backlashes erupting across Europe. Media coverage plays a key role in shaping competing narratives around these interventions, influencing public support or opposition - particularly in politically polarised contexts such as local elections. Despite the growing importance of such interventions, systematic research on their media representation remains limited and largely qualitative.

This seminar will feature Serena Mombelli, a PhD student in the Mobility, Transport, and Territory Research Group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, who will analyse how superblocks have been framed in Barcelona’s local news media, focusing on sentiment polarity and emotional tone. Using a transformer-based NLP model, this research analyses 896 news articles published between 2016 and 2024. Findings show that while neutral sentiment dominates, negative sentiment is more prevalent than positive. Peaks in negativity occur in 2019 and 2023, coinciding with electoral and political events. Emotion analysis reveals a prevalence of neutral sentiment, with anticipation and anger also consistently present. 

This research examines how media narratives around superblocks have evolved over time, revealing the emotional and discursive strategies that can shape public perceptions. By uncovering these narrative dynamics, this research aim to highlight the influential role of the media in framing urban planning debates. These insights can help policy makers to better understand and engage with the diverse discourses surrounding urban interventions. This event is part of the BSP Urban Mobility Research Seminar Series organised by the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. The seminar will include a 45-minute presentation followed by a 15-minute Q&A discussion.

Speaker Information

Serena Mombelli is a PhD student in the Mobility, Transport, and Territory Research Group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is currently conducting research at the Active Travel Academy at the University of Westminster. Her research lies at the intersection of social sustainability, the urban built environment, and mobility. Specifically, she explores how residents experience and interpret urban transformations aimed at creating more walkable, equitable and inclusive cities, and how these perceptions influence acceptance of such changes.