Sustainable urban development in Santiago de Compostela urban area.

Santiago de Compostela, whose urban area is home to around 128,000 inhabitants, has based its development around 5 main pillars:

Its development is closely linked to the planning of improvement to its infrastructures – communication, both land with the laying out of new highways and rapid access routes and the future arrival of the high speed train, and air, with the recent approval of the Master Plan for the Lavacolla airport.

All these strategic lines are supported by a range of inter-related policies on restructuring and adequacy of public services (police, fire, social services) with the aim of achieving diversity and maximum social cohesion through poverty and exclusion eradication projects. All of this is carried out with the support and permanent reference of the university and its research into models aimed at ensuring more sustainable development.

Planning policy in Santiago de Compostela is based on the preservation of the values inherent in its cultural legacy, aimed at sustainable development through a general renovation plan. In this way it encourages the search for urban compactness, in the face of the uncontrolled expansion of the city and dispersion.

Thus, through research into mobility in the city centre, an urban fabric was proposed around a network of pedestrian routes and green passages providing access to the focal points of the historic city and its main centres of activity. In parallel, special mention should be made measures encouraging public transport in the Municipal Transport Plan.
This policy combining rehabilitation, conservation and renovation of the historic city alongside new developments in which protected housing is of major importance, and its integration into its natural surroundings, has been recognised by numerous international and national awards, in particular the UN Good Practices Prize awarded in 2002.

Also, Santiago de Compostela has shown evidence of a strong commitment to the environment and sustainability, signing up to the Aalborg charter and setting the objective of making development compatible with preservation of the environment through concrete commitments, among which are the implementation of local Agenda 21 together with cities of the so-called Atlantic arc.

The financing of large infrastructures in which the different levels of Spanish government cooperate with the support of European funds and capital from the European Investment Bank: with an interweaving of smaller scale actions and aid which have given highly satisfactory results in the conservation and renovation of the historic centre. In this way, the overall idea of recovery is achieved by the sum of many small actions.

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Urban Policy > Urban environment > Land use

Suburbanisation, Urban-rural relationship, Zoning, Urbanisation