Madrid Metropolitan Forest and the water cycle

Abstract

In the context of global warming and increasing aridity in Spain, Madrid’s Strategic Planning Office is investing in 4,300 ha of forest to link the existing 27,700 ha of large parks. The 32,000-ha Metropolitan Forest aims to improve the quality of life in the city. It is divided into five zones. The 1,250- ha Zone Four project explores a design alternative to the area’s dominant hardscaped plaza and high-maintenance nineteenth-century park from the notion of the artificial pastoral. It magnifies the water cycle in three new and recovered historical aspects: increased floodable areas, a network of natural and artificial green-blue infrastructures, and an increased volume of used regenerated water and sludge to support a palette of forested landscapes. The project also contributes to slow mobility, civic nodes and connectivity infrastructures between the city and the Metropolitan Forest. Historically, compact Mediterranean cities like Madrid have had an aversion to trees. Fortunately, recent initiatives by the city are changing course, allowing both urban forestry and forest urbanism to flourish.

Keywords:

• Forests
• Madrid
• greenbelt
• water infrastructure
• water cycle

Notes

1 Retrieved from the Metropolitan Forest website: bosquemetropolitano.madrid.es.

2 The Directorate General for Strategic Planning (Direccion General de Planificacion Estrategica, DGPE) has taken on the task of launching the Metropolitan Forested Green Belt project in 2020. The DGPE has organized five zones and launched an international competition. The results can be seen on the website estrategiaurbana.madrid.es/concurso-bosque-metropolitano/.

3 The firm of aldayjover architecture and landscape is based in Barcelona and New Orleans, aldayjover.com.

4 Geographical distribution of drylands, delimited based on the aridity index (AI). The classification of AI is: Humid AI ▸ 0.65, Dry sub-humid 0.50 ▸ AI ≤ 0.65, Semi-arid 0.20 ▸ AI ≤ 0.50, Arid 0.05 ▸ AI ≤ 0.20, Hyper-arid AI ▸ 0.05. See: John T. Abatzoglou et al., TerraClimate Precipitation and Potential Evapotranspiration (1980–2015) (2018), ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-3/.

5 Andrés Álvarez Flórez, Aquellos bulevares de Madrid: antecedentes, aparición y evolución de las grandes vías arboladas de Madrid (PhD thesis, 2022), oa.upm.es/70288/1/TFG_Enero22_Alvarez_Florez_Andres.pdf.

6 The storm Filomena in January 2021 had a catastrophic effect on Madrid’s trees, see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Filomena.

7 Terrain vague is a French term used by Ignasi de Sola Morales to describe unproductive spaces and precious spaces of freedom. Ignasi de Solà-Morales Rubió, Presente y Futuros: Arquitectura en las ciudades (Barcelona: Collegi d’arquitectes de Catalunya/Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, 1996), 10-23.

8 Gilles Clément, ‘The Planetary Garden’ and Other Writings, translated by Sandra Morris (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).

9 The forest inventory statistics on land and forest area are based on UN-FAO/ECE TBFRA2000 data: unece.org/unece/trade/timber/fra/welcome.htm. Information on the satellite image: Risto Päivinen et al., Combining Earth Observation Data and Forest Statistics: EFI Research Report 14 (European Forest Institute, Joint Research Centre–European Commission, EUR 19911 EN, 2001). Map retrieved from: eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/forest-map-of-europe-1.

10 Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World (London: Elliott and Thompson, 2021).

11 2015-Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015. It entered into force on 4 November 2016. Its overarching goal is to hold ‘the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels’ and pursue efforts ‘to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels’. See: unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement.

12 Existing millennia-old network of paths of varying sizes for the seasonal movement of livestock, particularly cows and sheep moving north-south. See: comunidad.madrid/servicios/medio-rural/red-vias-pecuarias-comunidad-madrid.

13 Sophie Gonick, ‘Interrogating Madrid’s “Slum of Shame”: Urban Expansion, Race, and Place-Based Activisms in the Cañada Real Galiana’, Antipode 47 (2015), 1224–1242.

14 See: bosquemetropolitano.madrid.es/bosque-del-manana/.

15 Carmen Sánchez, Miguel Núñez Peiró and Javier Neila, ‘Urban Heat Island and Vulnerable Population: The Case of Madrid’, in: Pilar Mercader-Moyano (ed.), Sustainable Development and Renovation in Architecture, Urbanism and Engineering (Cham: Springer, 2018), 3–13.

16 Pedro Martínez-Santos and Pedro Alfaro, ‘A Brief Historical Account of Madrid’s Qanats’, Ground Water 50/4 (2012), 645–653.

17 2002 Public Space European Award goes to a floodable park and amphitheater bull fight arena designed by aldayjover. See: publicspace.org/works/-/project/b009-recuperacion-delcauce-y-riberas-del-rio-gallego. The award was organized by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona together with six other European institutions: The Architecture Foundation, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Architektur–zentrum Wien, Netherlands Architecture Institute, German Architecture Museum and the Museum of Finnish Architecture. See also: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_ Prize_for_Urban_Public_Space; Work exposed at the 2nd International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, 2005, iabr.nl/en/editie/the-flood, 172.

18 European Commission, European Red List of Habitats, ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/knowledge/redlist_en.htm; and guidelines on the EU2020 Biodiversity Strategy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margarita Jover

Margarita Jover is professor of Architecture at Tulane University and the co-founder of aldayjover architecture and landscape. The offices’s work focuses on a new approach to the relationship between cities and rivers, integrating infrastructure into the urban realm to create hybrid architectures and landscapes. In addition to numerous parks, the office has completed several restorations of historical buildings and social housing projects, interweaving different scales of collective and public spaces. The practice has received awards, including the European Urban Public Space Prize (2002) and the FAD Prize for City and Landscape (2009). Jover is co-editor with Alex Wall of Ecologies of Prosperity, for the Living City (ORO Editors, 2019).