Talking about urban growth is talking about extensions. The second district of Barcelona, much as it is now the epicenter of the city, became famous with the same name, the Eixample. Hardly anyone remembers the one in Madrid anymore, and that started from the Puerta de Alcalá and formed the neighborhoods of Salamanca and Chamberí.
The Madrid Ensanche project is more or less from the same period as the Barcelona one; It was carried out by the architect Carlos María de Castro and the City Council began to execute it in 1860. Seen on the map, it has a certain resemblance to two lungs.. One, around Chamberí and Salamanca and the other, from Atocha up to going up the course of the Manzanares. The two surrounded the central almond, that of Madrid de los Austrias. The Marqués de Salamanca, one of the great promoters of the project and who gave its name to one of the new neighbourhoods, justified the development of the city in his time with a very direct phrase that immediately made a fortune: “Madrid is getting too small for us. ”.
A little over a hundred years passed until Madrid once again became small. It happened at the beginning of the eighties, in the middle of the Transition. City Council and Community decided to suspend the growth of the capital. For almost two decades they preferred a centrifugal model, where only populations around. Between 1981 and 1996 Villa y Corte lost 300,000 inhabitants while the rest of the Community gained more than double. This diaspora from the center continues to be responsible for a large part of the traffic jams entering and exiting Madrid, and also for the subsequent rises in housing prices, inevitable given the marked shortage of supply within it..
Almost thirty years later, Madrid is in a position to undertake a new expansion towards the so-called developments in the southeast. They comprise four new neighborhoods that close the growth of the capital to the southeast of the neighborhoods of Salamanca and Atocha, balancing mobility and quality of life in the urban complex.. They will also be key to consolidating the supply of new affordable housing in the city.
Of the 150,000 new homes planned for Madrid in this and the next decade, more than 100,000 will be built in the southeast. Of these, more than 50,000 will be in Valdecarros, the main neighborhood of this new development. For this reason, any effective policy to make housing cheaper in Madrid will go through Valdecarros, where the City Council and the Community own 36% of the new flats planned.. The Community has already announced that the price of its promotions will be between 30% and 40% lower than the market price.
The planning of this new neighborhood has been taken care of down to the smallest detail. The development began in 2021 and is progressing faster and faster. Valdecarros will be urbanized and built over eight phases over the next 16 years. Construction of the first three, with 13,500 homes, will begin in 2025. More than 1,500 million euros will be invested in the development, which increases to 7,500 million euros if the building is included. We are probably facing one of the best examples of public-private urban collaboration. The City Council and the Community have shared a leading role with relevant financial entities such as Sareb and Santander and residential developers such as Pryconsa, Oncisa and Zapata, which have been joined in recent months by such relevant companies as Azora, Ebrosa, Habitat or Aedas Homes.
It is not easy to find a new first level development in the interior of a big city. Valdecarros is right now the largest in all of Spain and one of the largest in Europe. Within 16 years, with 150,000 residents, it will be the most inhabited neighborhood with the highest density of services and green areas in all of Madrid. It forms a flexible urban project in eight stages, capable of adapting over time to the new demands of the people of Madrid.
With Valdecarros, Madrid will take time to become small again.
Luis Roca de Togores is president of Valdecarros Madrid