A New Green Lung the Size of 50 Football Fields in an Alicante Municipality

An Alicante municipality has begun proceedings to transform over 300,000 square metres into the largest green lung in the municipal area. This space, reclaiming its public use, will be equivalent in size to 50 football fields like the Santiago Bernabéu stadium. Additionally, its use will be compatible with educational, sports, and recreational facilities.

The Calpe council will process the modification of the Garduix I and II, Pla Feliu I and II, and Ráfol I and II sectors next week. This area was listed in the 1998 General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) as developable land. Now, the aim is to reclassify it as a green zone and public facilities land.

With this change, the Ráfol I and II, Feliu I and II, and Garduix I and II sectors will form a large green lung of over 300,000 m² in a residential urbanisation area. Although these sectors appear in the PGOU as developable, they are rustic lands that have remained unprogrammed for 27 years, allowing for their declassification under current regulations.

Since the local government, several essential reasons have been presented to carry out this PGOU modification. On one hand, the aim is to preserve a large forest mass in the Garduix and Feliu areas, which will become a green zone. On the other hand, the intention is to promote public facilities land in the Ráfol area, to be allocated for educational, cultural, recreational, or sports uses.

The change also involves consolidating temporary uses. This is the case for the plot occupied by the IES Les Salines sections, which, although located on land classified as a green zone, was granted provisional authorisation for educational use. The same applies to the General Services warehouse in Ráfol, which becomes public facilities land for services. In both cases, educational and service uses are consolidated.

Furthermore, in Ráfol, there is a strip adjacent to the Quisi Ravine currently classified as developable, which, in compliance with PATRICOVA guidelines on ravine impact zones, will become a green zone.

The City Council intends to acquire the land by financially compensating the owners through expropriation, considering its nature as rustic land. This means that when compensating the owners, the land will be valued as it is, not based on unmaterialised urban development rights.

In November of last year, the declassification process began, requiring the technical services to draft a preliminary document and an initial strategic document outlining the characteristics of the sectors and the needs. Both documents will be submitted to the council meeting this Tuesday, and once approved, they will be forwarded to the Territorial Urban Planning Commission of the Generalitat Valenciana, the body responsible for continuing the process.

As it is a structural change to the General Urban Development Plan, the City Council can propose the declassification of the sectors, but the next steps in the process fall to the Conselleria.

This declassification alters the urban dynamics of the municipality and also proposes a different way of compensating the owners, as it will not be done through utilisation units or by increasing volumetry in other areas as has been done until now. This decision paves the way for a new mode of urban management in the municipality.