DESCRIPTION
During the last two decades, the Valencian Community has become the epicenter of some of the newest legal provisions regarding land use planning and urban planning. In this way, it began in a first stage – in the mid-nineties of the last century – with the approval of a new legal body that introduced a different way of interpreting urban planning and the role played by some of its main actors, contributing decisively to boost the real estate sector, but also abounding in an economy with a strong speculative burden and with effects that are not always beneficial on the territory and the landscape.
The strong controversy generated around some of the most debatable determinations of Valencian urban planning regulations was favored by a climate of certain social alarm and by the presentation of a multitude of appeals against administrative resolutions, which ultimately caused the increasingly Valencia’s more complex legislative framework was placed at the center of a controversy that ended up transcending not only autonomous, but even national borders. In this way, Valencian urban planning was subjected to a deep inspection by certain bodies and commissions of the European Union, while projecting an image that was not always correct and frequently unfair, of the type of actions that were being developed within the autonomous community .
With the start of the second decade of the 21st century, part of the legislative work of the Ministry responsible for spatial planning was oriented towards a new way of interpreting urban doctrine, based on substantiating the supplementary nature of urban planning, prioritizing a territorial vision and incorporation of more subjective concepts, such as landscape. The obsession to innovate and the systematic recourse to concepts such as “green, sustainable, rational, pioneering”, etc …, led to the progressive devaluation of conventional urban planning tools and more than enough (although improvable) effectiveness, compared to apparently novel techniques and infallible, capable of ordering the territory.
In this context, the Valencian Government promoted a process of recasting and reformulating the territorial and urban planning framework, which aspired to resolve the complexity and hypertrophy that had characterized it. Fully legitimized objective, but whose materialization evidenced a worrying improvisation and haste, translated into relevant contradictions, shortcomings and hardly justified proposals, which, far from helping to simplify and clarify the objectives set, could lead to a scenario of legal insecurity and constitute as a whole , a setback in some substantial respects.
In this context, the research work carried out by AUG-ARQUITECTOS, SLP and submitted to the contest organized by the FYDU Foundation, focuses on one of the identity elements of the announced new autonomous territorial model, the so-called “Green and Landscape Infrastructure of the Valencian Community ”, conceived – in the words of its creators – as“ an innovative concept in the management of the open spaces of the territory and in its planning ”. The references to its delimitation and observance are constant, as a cornerstone of the new autonomous territorial model, as it has to incorporate its characterization in the definition of the territorial models of all the plans, programs and projects of the set of Public Administrations affected. on the territory and the landscape and with special incidence in the territorial and urban planning of the undeveloped land.
The supposedly innovative nature of the current way of ordering the territory has in the Territorial Strategy of the Valencian Community, approved in early 2011, the essential legal framework and in this fit, the Green Infrastructure is the protagonist element. On these premises, this research work addresses an exhaustive analysis of the new criteria imposed by the Ministry responsible for spatial planning, after having had the opportunity to put this new methodology into practice in different municipalities belonging to the so-called Valencian Rural System.
In the work it is analyzed if the desirable exercise of coordination of the municipal scale with the supra-municipal scale, and of rationalization of the proposals of growth and regulation of uses in the space, is possible with the new tools, in which case we would speak of a scenario of opportunity, or if, on the contrary, in the event of not correcting a series of serious dysfunctions, experience would have shown that we are approaching the decline of a territorial model, with a special incidence in the municipalities of the Rural System. To determine its scope, the studies carried out focused on evaluating its impact on the so-called Valencian Rural System, as it is the most vulnerable territorial area from the socioeconomic and demographic point of view in the whole of the Valencian Community and the most relevant from the point of view. from an environmental and heritage perspective.
This research work was awarded by the jury of National Planning Award Ricardo Santos Díez 2013 with the Special Mention of the Jury.
DETAILS OF THE PROJECT
Conveners of the contest: Fundación Formación y Desarrollo Urbanístico (FYDU); Universidad San Pablo-CEU, Escuela de Negocios; LA LEY, Grupo Wolters Kluwer
