Page 281 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Urban Regeneration on railway lands

Historical aerial views of the railway lands
gobbled by the cities of Zaragoza, Valencia and
Alicante (above)

Since then, the Railway‐City couple has been, complex and convulsive, and the celebrations
for its arrival were transformed into annoyances, walls, pollution, noise, disintegration and
rupture of the urban net. The city and the railroad help and need each other, but they give
their backs as “proud lovers”.
Hundred and fifty years later, the arrival of the High Speed Railway, has served as a spur for
the integral reconsideration of the railway equipment in the cities. Major works of adaptation
and improvement of the existing vast railway facilities are needed to accommodate new traffic,
new gauges and new technology.

2. The oportunity
Remodeling these railway infrastructures, entails very high cost and the space needed is not always
available due to the city’s gulp of its “hated lover”. But the problem that this urban takeover had
generated was not only a problem, but a strategic opportunity for the railroad, but also and specially,
for the city.
These railway installations, which need to be refurbished and improved, are occupying now a
large amount of land in the center of the cities, lands that have an extraordinary urban value
because of its strategic location.
On one side they are central plots, with optimal accessibility with the city and on the other side
they are next to the High Speed Train Station which give them a privileged access to railway
communications and to the main business centers of the country and the world!

This fact, endows these soils with a valuable potential that allows them to fight in unbeatable
conditions with other urban plots, but that needs to be transformed to add value and deliver
his full potential.
Blending this cost‐benefit tandem, with the fact that cities demanded the disappearance of
these railway installations, whose coexistence with the city had become conflictive, arises the
possibility of cooperating!

What if we modernized and removed the railway station´s complementary facilities outside
from the city center?

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 279