The church is located in a zone which in the 19th century, when development began, was far from the historic city centre, with fields of crops and just a few houses. 

The plot on which the church is built is set in a block of Eixample houses, the well-known grid or urban weft conceived by Ildefons Cerdà in 1860. It is bounded by Carrer de Mallorca, Carrer de Marina, Carrer de Provença and Carrer de Sardenya.

In 1905, when the town-planner Lleó Jaussely produced his City Plan, a set of links known as the Jaussely Plan, he asked Gaudí to make a proposal for the surroundings of the church so as to include it in his project. So that there could be a proper view of the church and its main parts, and so that it would be possible to see the group of volumes and masses in their full expressiveness, Gaudí thought of the "optimal viewpoints", in other words, the distances and perspectives advisable for a proper view.

The result was a star-shaped structure free of buildings; hence the concept of "starred ground plan". He made a first model with eight points that turned out to be ideal but excessively expensive, since the amount of land that had to be bought pushed up the price of the project. And so Gaudí made a second proposal, more limited and adjusted to the possibilities of the local administration of the time. Once again, the structure was star-shaped, now with four points and four different viewpoints that showed the four façades.

In 1907, Jaussely incorporated the solution proposed by Gaudí into his City Plan, but it never went ahead. In 1916 Barcelona Council asked Gaudí for fresh proposals and an estimate of the cost involved in the acquisition of plots of land with a view to the new City Plan of 1917. Gaudí presented his new star-shaped ground plans, signed in October 1916 and on a scale of 1:2000.

Barcelona Council never carried out any of the projects proposed by Gaudí, but they did open a diagonal avenue from the Hospital de St Pau to the apse of the church. That solution pleased the architect because it almost coincided with one of the viewpoints he had proposed. It was named Avinguda de Gaudí.

In 1928, two years after Gaudí"s death, a large square in front of the Passion façade, named Plaça de la Sagrada Família, was developed and in 1980 a second one was created in front of the Nativity façade, called Plaça d'Antoni Gaudí.

In the seventies a particular building was erected in front of the Glory façade, the place where Gaudí had planned to build a great staircase leading up to the church.

The present Barcelona City Plan proposes to leave a free space sixty metres wide in the central part of the two blocks of houses which separate the Glory façade from Avinguda Diagonal.