Page 286 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Pérez del Caño García, Silvia.

7. The cities of the future

Today, cities are definitely the engines of economic development, innovation catalysts and investment
multipliers (they produce 70% of GDP with 50% of the population). But they also face serious problems
due to pollution, high noise levels, excessive resources consumption, CO emissions, congestion, time
2
consumption, etc ...
These both sides of the coin make more than ever necessary to work for mitigate the negative
effects of urbanization and enhance the positive ones, and the only way to do this is through good
urban and infrastructure planning.
Faced with this challenge, major cities in the developed world are carrying out major urban
regeneration and recycling soil projects, recovering degraded areas, industrial areas, disused
infrastructures, to create new quality spaces for citizens, green areas, housing, offices, shops, vibrant
new districts, and urban infrastructures on areas with optimal accessibility in the surroundings of the
High Speed Railway Station.

They achieve with this Redevelopment Projects to minimize resources (soil, displacement, energy
and time), and create more compact and efficient cities that face the necessary growth, in a more
sustainable way.
The main Spanish cities have already joined this trend of Urban Regeneration. Madrid aspires to get
on this boat with the biggest of all the Projects planned.
However there are notable differences between Spanish Projects and those carried out in other
countries, which can help us to understand and to learn from their successes and mistakes.
• Do all urban regeneration operations have similar sizes?

• Is the initiative public or private?
• What kind of urban development do they propose?
• How are these expensive operations been financed?

• How much building floor is generated by the reconversion of soils? What is the current result of
these projects?

8. Conclusions
Once we analyze where we have come from, and how we have walk the path, the most important
thing is to find solutions so that we can move forward and succeed in carrying out this Urban‐Rail
Redevelopment Projects that are necessary for cities and their inhabitants.
On the way, we have found that other countries have already successfully undertaken these
complex Re urbanization Projects, transforming them into new urban areas with vocation to become
vibrant centrality, revitalizing and increasing value of the soils. All these project´s dimension have
transcended the area they transform, with a global impact on the whole city.
Most of international Projects analyzed have already been successfully finished, which is not the case
of any of the Spanish ones which are nowadays under development or still planning. That is why we
analyze the keys to success of those who go ahead, to copy their successes, learn from their mistakes
and to draw conclusions.
The first of the aspects that calls attention is the size of the transformed areas. Among all the similar
Urban‐Rail Redevelopment Projects analyzed, the Spanish ones are remarkably much more larger
than ones developed in other countries, doubling and tripling even to the international projects.
It seems likely it would be more feasible to carry out this type of developments, if undertaken
on smaller projects.

284 360.revista de alta velocidad