2 General approach

The main task of planning is to manage two primary heritage stocks as scarce resources for the whole community: land and the built heritage. Together, they shape the territory, with its ecosystems and landscapes, whether rural, urbanized or otherwise anthropised, and the urban environment, with its infrastructures and other associated services.

The objective of ecological sustainability also calls above all for these two stocks to be managed judiciously to address the population's needs, while particularly bearing in mind the vocations of the territory to conserve and even enrich a cultural heritage that brings together rural and urban ecosystems and landscapes.

In view of this, the main challenged from the angle of urban sustainability and habitability hinges not so much on improving the quality of building and urban development (which is taken as given) as, above all, on managing the city and built heritage, regenerating them and converting them on new principles, especially in countries such as Spain, where the built stock is oversized and in many cases of dubious urban and construction quality.

From a spatial point of view, the main short- and medium-term challenge is to reorient the major pools of land that has already been compromised, in many cases several times larger than the land that has already been built up, and reorganising farming areas and landscapes that are under pressure from the potential for requalification.

The primordial objective therefore requires the expansion of land occupation to give way to the reuse and regeneration of the built stock and the deteriorated urban and peri-urban environment —all with as little economic, social and ecological damage as possible.

The current recession has occurred at just the right time to make the built stock profitable again by means of income (from renting) rather than capital gains (from sales). The new land and spatial legislation contributes towards these goals, as does the setting-up of an urban information system that promises to be an effective instrument for the integrated diagnosis and monitoring of quality levels and uses of the territory and buildings, as well as the city's functioning and services and the problems of its inhabitants.

As is being recognised in the various initiatives that are already underway (such as the Urban Information System, Urban Initiatives Network and others) simple information on the urban developments planned over the territory as a whole is the first step in deactivating growth forecasts that border on the absurd: if it makes no sense for a municipal district to plan for developments that multiply its housing stock several times over until its territory is packed with buildings and infrastructures, it makes even less sense for all districts and regions to do it an the same time. This brings us to the added consideration that potentially disproportionate plans may be the first step in showing the need for them to be cut back by consensus. This is therefore the start of a policy that can allow information compiled by local authorities on the development effects of the territory in planning to be coordinated and homogenised with information on the actual occupation of the territory.

It thus appears to be a priority for criteria to be unified and this type of information to be compiled effectively. We also need to accurately determine not only the farming qualities and uses —or other uses of the unoccupied territory— but also the nature of the spaces and ecosystems whose destruction often represents an irrecoverable loss of heritage that is not recorded in standard economic accounting. Information on thresholds beyond which the exploitation or deterioration of natural resources leads to irreversible losses is essential in order to determine the territory's carrying capacity and regulate uses in accordance with the principle of caution.

Furthermore, the hierarchy of criteria invoked to regulate spatial planning and uses cannot only be subordinate to the private interests of land-owners and developers and the almost exclusive support of technical and scientific criteria. The mosaic of qualities and uses of the territory and its heritage assets to be preserved must be made specific (together with management instruments) with the agreement and support of the population at all levels. Achieving such a consensus requires the fostering of participation processes and transparent information on potential spatial scenarios, until widely accepted priorities and conservation goals and management instruments can be defined. This broad, transparent, democratic consensus, which differs from the other elitist and reserved kind that has become a virtual fixture of urban planning in Spain, must be a fundamental objective for the new discipline for the territory and urban planning that we need.

The distribution of powers approved under the Spanish Constitution and contained in the Regional Statutes has given rise to an intricate legislative maze on this topic that must be taken into account by any policy that hopes to come up with viable proposals. This document therefore clears a path through that maze as the first step towards assessing it and attempting to offer proposals for redirecting it, as necessary. As we shall see below, the current legislative panorama presents a number of missing features, problems and limitations from he angles of sustainability and habitability. Nevertheless, this is probably not enough to address the more profound transformations that the pending change in the urban and spatial model will require. The change goes beyond the current legislative panorama and requires us to assess the gulf that is often observed between the legislation and the actual situation on the ground, which often relegates the legislation to a purely ceremonial role, while things on the ground go their own way.

In view of this we should underline that the change in the urban and spatial model that needs to be made does not affect only planning but virtually all policies and planning-related powers as well, ranging from budget and tax policies, via health, education, employment and social cohesion, to building interventions undertaken by different authorities. We therefore need an ambitious policy that judges and supports the conservation, reuse, demolition or replacement of the built stock in accordance with the population's needs, and the adaptation of buildings, infrastructures and environments to the local climate, ecological behaviour and cultural value. A policy that articulates and links the wide diversity of functions and activities that converge in urban fabrics, where proximity and habitability reduce mobility needs. One that applies new bioclimatic criteria to reinvent the use of local materials by vernacular architecture. One that turns the tide to support the utilitarian function of housing instead of its role as a luxury financial investment. One that supports greater flexibility and efficiency in the use of the housing stock, that strengthens renting as a way to make profits from property, more in line with a more function and less speculative use of the housing stock, and also publicly promoted social housing instead of the current predominance of free-market housing. Tax arrangements such that local funding does not rely so heavily on urban-development actions (either through taxes or simply through the requalification and capital gains associated with increasing the volume already built). And a tax policy that, unlike the current system, penalises capital gains derived from speculative sales and purchases and rewards income derived from renting. All these measures would unequivocally lead to greater sustainability of our urban systems.

The Spanish national government has major transversal competencies that allow it to affect all these policies, including those related to land and housing. But the change of model can only be addressed from the position of a prior integrating commitment at all levels of government, involving all the social actors and stakeholders affected, particularly the real estate sector, and with the participation of the public, based on as broad as possible consensus.

It will not be possible for these changes to be brought about unless the local, regional and national authorities responsible for undertaking the transition to this new model have the necessary effective will. Judiciously applying the existing instruments of all kinds or any new ones that take us forward towards our sustainability goals would form a key part of the transition strategy and minimal protocol described.

In this document we analyse —more specifically and following the methodology described below— the elements that could give shape to these ideas, resulting from the work done by the team that has prepared this report.