Green light for the metropolis of the future: 220,000 more apartments in mixed-use spaces to balance the territory

The most important urban planning tool for the Barcelona metropolitan area, designed to improve the territorial conditions of its 36 constituent municipalities, received the green light this Monday. The new plan will replace the Metropolitan General Plan, in effect since 1976 and focused on an outdated model of growth through sprawl or land occupation. Its objective is to address current challenges, particularly in housing, but also to balance the entire metropolis in terms of activity, mobility, land use, and development. This tool is the Metropolitan Urban Master Plan (PDUM), and it was approved by the Metropolitan Council, the highest governing body of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB). The process began in 2015, when drafting started; the first draft was presented in 2019, and it received initial approval in 2023. Since then, the plan has received more than 5,180 comments and reports from various administrations and organizations. The guidelines now incorporated into the text, which will affect the 36 municipalities and 3.38 million inhabitants of the AMB (Barcelona Metropolitan Area), will create a unified urban planning framework for the next 25 years. In fact, the plan seeks to address needs, such as access to housing and mobility, that also exist outside this area, such as in Maresme, Vallès, and Garraf, but which, not being included in the AMB nor having a similar body, lack these resources. This is a long-standing demand of the so-called metropolitan region. What ideas underpin the new plan?

This is a strategic urban development plan, meaning it focuses more on the "how" and the processes involved, rather than on closed, predefined proposals. "It's not a catalog of projects, but rather a document that provides guidance for ensuring that growth is carried out effectively," explained Damià Calvet, Vice President of the Urban Planning and Natural Spaces Department, at a press conference on Tuesday. This new master plan seeks to define objectives, aspirations, and intentions, as well as the tools to achieve and define processes. "This doesn't mean less executive, but more operational," added Xavier Mariño, Director of the Urban Planning and Natural Spaces Department at the AMB (Barcelona Metropolitan Area). The result is a document with "clear and unambiguous proposals" and a simple development system that "establishes the rules of engagement between the final phase and the POUMet—the Metropolitan Urban Development Plan—that is to come." He also highlighted legal certainty as a final guiding principle, since the PDUM must comply with the hierarchy and respect the metropolitan general plan and the metropolitan territorial plan –of the Generalitat–, and fit within the legislative and urban planning framework.

How to have more living space in less space

These intentions translate, in housing matters, for example, into the creation of another 220,000 main apartments in the metropolitan area to accommodate population growth up to 2050, projected at 184,000 new inhabitants. This would bring the total to 3.58 million people. This figure is similar to the 214,000 plan announced by the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa. However, this master plan aims to achieve this by doubling planning capacity but by reclassifying land rather than creating new developments. This means it will reduce the area's urban and developable land by 1,850 hectares, which will become non-developable. The instruments that will allow this are metropolitan opportunity areas—existing areas in strategic locations with the potential to increase growth—and urban regeneration areas.

"The document does not incorporate extensive growth factors," Calvet said in this regard, after many municipalities have occupied their territory in recent decades because that was the plan outlined in the 1976 Metropolitan General Plan. Experts warn that the bottleneck of urban regeneration is its complexity, slowness, and costs. In December, a report from the APCE-UPF Chair already warned that 73% of the PDUM's housing potential "rests on urban renewal and the existing city" and cautioned that instruments are needed to overcome property fragmentation and reduce costs, since transforming existing areas usually clashes with private interests, relocation costs, and litigation. Rebalancing the territory

The new PDUM (Urban Development Plan) also anticipates that virtually all municipalities in the metropolitan area will increase their proportion of housing if they specialize in business activity, or conversely, increase their building capacity for business activity if they specialize in residential areas. This planning challenges the idea of ​​a radial city, in which Barcelona is the hub of activity and the other cities are primarily commuter towns. In this regard, the master plan identifies 15 points or nodes where this transformation can take place, which can become new urban centers with both housing and business activity, increasing density and mixing uses. These areas are Porta Garraf, Delta-Gran Via, Morrot, Cruïlla Sant Boi, Cornisa Verde, Diagonal Ponent, Diagonal-Llobregat, Quatre Camins, Nexo Baix Llobregat, Corredor Mediterráneo, Cruïlla Vallès, Cruïlla Montcada, Besòs Central, and Besòs-Gran Via.

Map of spaces of the metropolitan project

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The goal is to achieve mixed urban fabrics, a distribution of activities closer to where people live, and a reduction in motorized traffic.

Mobility and emissions

This focus on housing and mixed-use development has implications for mobility and amenities. The master plan proposes a 240-kilometer network of metropolitan avenues connecting several municipalities and concentrating surface public transport, as well as bicycle and pedestrian routes. This network should allow half of the current residential land and 58.2% of the land in industrial parks to be located within 500 meters of these new channels for public transport and active mobility. With all this, a reduction in emissions and energy infrastructure consumption is expected, as well as a 5% decrease in waste generation per capita.