Page 197 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Processes, urban impact and evaluation of the high-speed rail in the city of Zaragoza, Spain.

The team tried a new method of public participation and the exposure of first drafts had more
than one hundred proposals. In the meantime, this area and the Agreement as a whole was used
as a political tool and the way for funding some other works and infrastructures in the city as, for
example, a new subway line. Then it started a political discussion between the representatives of
different ZAV partners, which delayed the progress of the project. At last, near November 2004
the partners reached an agreement about the external and financial issues of the development.
One of the terms was to increase the density of the area through residential uses.

Fig 22. Aerial view of Delicias area in 2001-2002.
Source: ZAV.

The team could finish the design, including the new conditions and the more than hundred
suggestions that had been received during the design process. But in April 2005, when ZAV
showed the design to local technicians and to the press, there was a quite surprise. The city
planning department did not like the design and neither the Neighborhood Associations of
Delicias and Almozara. Both, municipals and neighbors considered that there was too much
residential density near their neighborhoods and there was a lack of public spaces between
the new areas. For the city planning department there was not bioclimatic solutions in urban
design. The worst feeling was the major infrastructural role in the design without a pedestrian
point of view. The plan was considered too expensive, with no real needs. It provided a new
exit road tunnel from Portillo. Also, the western area had a very complicated grid which made
difficult urbanizing and building the different blocks. The locals were also against the street of
only one direction, putting all the entrance to the city in the old Avenue of Navarra, needed of
an urgent renovation, and putting all the exit way on a new road, onto the buried rail tracks.

City planning managers started in a secret way to prepare their own proposal, drawn in a few
days. The City plan had a more traditional grid in the western part, avoiding huge infrastructures
and high-rise buildings near inhabited areas. The proposal provided a huge park in the area
between the two neighborhoods and erased some towers in front of the intermodal station,
next to Avenue of Navarre. ZAV did not accept the local plan and it was enraged with the
Planning Department. The winning team had been working for more than a year and a half and
the municipals pretended to do radical changes in few days. So, it started a fight that moved
up to the local press and political level.
Timing for the Expo 2008 forced a political and technical agreement. The final design took
elements from both plans. The buildings in front of the Almozara neighborhood were removed
and in this place, was created an equipped park. The plan incorporated several environmental
considerations in the final draft. The road tunnel and the elevated road at the entrance of the
city stayed. After some argues with the team, some of whom resigned, the master plan was
approved definitively in February 2006. The urbanization project had started and there was
almost no time to finish the works needed for the Expo.

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 195