Clara García-Mayor

Frentes marítimo-fluviales en ciudades españolas: nuevos espacios urbanos

Many Spanish city waterfronts have been renewed in the last thirty years. These transformations had common origins, that is, the obsolescence of activities and land uses that were previously hosted, or the degradation and disconnection of these maritime and river fronts in relation to the surrounding urban fabric. A selection of case studies shows the diversity of contexts and strategies that finally resulted in four important improvements at different scales: i) increase in territorial and urban connectivity; ii) redistribution of facilities in the city, iii) environmental regeneration, and iv) an interconnected network of urban and peri-urban public spaces. River and maritime waterfronts have acquired a renewed role through regeneration strategies, which have not only transformed places physically but have also changed the population’s perception of these areas. Nowadays, changes in user perceptions can be readily accessed and identified by using social networks to analyze user preferences and activities in urban spaces. Specifically, heat-maps provided by Instasights’ cartography are generated by managing geolocated data and hashtags from images uploaded by users of Instagram social network. The resulting heat-maps provide a research tool that can cross-check assumptions made about the mix of activities occurring at urban waterfronts.

Poly-nuclear urban system, landscape identity and economic development: The Vega Baja of the Segura River (Alicante) case study

The territory that comprises the Vega Baja of the Segura River (Alicante province) has experienced a drastic change in terms of land occupancy and settlement growth patterns in the last twenty-five years evidenced by the introduction of new economic activities. Agricultural land use has been declining and in its place tourism related businesses have flourished. New emerging patterns of urban settlements, driven by changing economic factors have been highlighted. This process has significantly impacted the landscape and how the local population relates to their living environment. The Vega Baja plane of the Segura River developed from the expansion of its functional network systems –water canals (irrigation and drainage), routes (pathways), and enclaves (settlements)– which enabled the occupation and colonization of extensive areas of marshy land from the ninth century. The territorial organization of this study’s area developed over the course of eleven centuries and remained relatively stable until after 1986, when agriculture lost its primacy and followed by an intense rural exodus (García-Mayor & Canales Martínez, 2017). Consequently, over the course of the last twenty years specific changes in land management policies have Abstract. The geographical area of this study -the Vega Baja alluvial plainis characterized by its intensively irrigated agricultural pattern. It is one of the last remaining Huerta European landscapes identified in the Dobris Report and dates back to the ninth-century. Since the 1990s, the introduction of new land uses has modified the configuration patterns of otherwise stable traditional settlements. The exceptionally rapid pace of this process has had a significant impact on the landscape, the environment, and on how the local population relates to their surroundings. Moreover, in the last twenty-five years, the local economy has undergone restructuring, producing a mind-shift among local communities and resulting in a meaningful loss of crop production surface to make way for town-planning developments. The preservation of the Huerta’s landscape identity requires a comprehensive and integrated reference framework to ensure sustainable development which is a goal advanced by this work. To this end, four key categories -Landscape, Agriculture, Habitat and Tourismare defined and analyzed over three separate time periods that reflect the evolution of the territory. The aim of this paper is to provide an analytical territorial framework that can inform and guide future decision making —in the context of sustainable economic development— that should embrace a comprehensive approach to Huerta landscape identity values.