Barcelona Metropolitan Region Research Articles

Valoración escénica de paisaje periurbano con utilidad en planeamiento territorial. Estudio de caso en la Región Metropolitana de Barcelona

Landscape's quality plays an important role in economic activities localisation, mainly in extraordinary or reputed sceneries. In degraded, everyday and suburban landscapes, landscape's quality is also deep important because indirectly determines where activities may be located, for example using selected viewsheds to discard impacting activities. European landscape convention gives remarkable importance to everyday landscapes, mentioning them in its Preamble, Article 2 and 6. The aim of this paper is to show a proceeding especially planned to asses landscape quality in degraded and everyday landscapes, without outstanding aesthetic values but important in quality of life because being placed in suburban areas. To this end visual landscape approach is yielded, using gis techniques and validating results in Muntanyes d’Ordal, in Barcelona's metropolitan region (Spain).An indirect landscape assessment procedure is developed, considering landscape from a quality and fragility point of view. Landscape quality refers to intrinsic values; landscape fragility refers to responses to changes. Both, quality and fragility are of interest in urban planning: the former gives information about most interesting areas from a landscape's values point of view and the later from urban planning perspective. Besides that, also physiographic and ecologic landscape values have been also considered. Ground work has provided the most of the information, collecting data at 1:5,000 accuracy. Vector and raster data models have been used, creating final maps of 10m pixels and 1:10,000 accuracy. Microstation v8 © Bentley and ArcGis 10 © ESRI software has been used.Landscape quality has been assessed giving positives values to land cover, vegetation, relief and terrain structure. Also punctual elements have been considered, according to local inhabitant's perception. In general terms, forested areas, contrasted relief, cliffs and eye-catching colours in rocks have been positively valuated in a 1 to 5 scale range. Viewsheds from positive and negative considered elements have been calculated, giving a +2 punctuation to the positive ones and -1 to the negative ones.Landscape fragility has been assessed considering those variables which increase or decrease visual absorption, such as height vegetation, slope or aspect, in a 1 to 5 scale range. Viewsheds have been calculated from peaks, gazers, urban areas, and roads. Eventually both layers have been combined and new values reclassified.Finally quality and fragility landscape's maps have been synthesised, in order to make results easy to understand and use in urban planning. Values harmonisation has been done considering that low quality values and low fragility values mean high aptitude to receive new urban planning and, inversely, high quality values and high fragility values mean low aptitude to receive new planning. Final results have been classified in five categories legend, from very low to very height.A 5.97% of the studied area has a very high aptitude to receive new urban developments, whereas the most of the studied area (44.71% and 25.08%) have high and medium values. The studied area contains some protected areas, which mean 65.29% of very high or high values to receive new planning. Those areas, because being protected, should be discarded in new planning. On the contrary, outside protected areas, more than 50% of the studied area has high values to receive new planning. That means beside landscape values, those areas are adjacent to already built up areas or in a distance lower to 50m, so new planning is desirable to take place within.Exercises like this one have an important applied value and are a good tool in urban planning, especially in degraded, suburban and everyday landscapes, because prevent from a landscape improvement and helps to a well-being and quality landscapes.

Energy–Landscape Integrated Analysis: A proposal for measuring complexity in internal agroecosystem processes (Barcelona Metropolitan Region, 1860–2000)

Farm systems are facing a global challenge amidst a socio-metabolic transition that places them in a dilemma between increasing land-use intensity to meet the growing demand of food, feed, fibres and fuels, while avoiding a biodiversity loss at the same time. To solve this dilemma a deeper research on how species richness is kept in different land-use patterns is required, according to the quantity and quality of the ecological disturbance that farmers carry out across the landscape. We propose an Energy–Landscape Integrated Analysis model that assesses both the complexity of internal energy loops, and the information held in the whole network of socio-metabolic energy fluxes, so as to correlate this energy-information interplay with the functional landscape structure. The results show that the landscape heterogeneity of Mediterranean land-use mosaics, created by traditional organic mixed-farming, have tended to vanish as a result of a simultaneous reduction in the complexity of the interlinking pattern of energy flows and the quantity of information carried by them. The model could help us to reveal how and why different agroecosystem managements lead to key turning points in the relationship of the energy profile with landscape ecological functioning. No doubt, these results will be very useful for designing more sustainable farm systems worldwide in the future.

Polycentricity, Performance and Planning: Concepts, Evidence and Policy in Barcelona, Catalonia

Polycentricity, Performance and Planning: Concepts, Evidence and Policy in Barcelona, Catalonia

Polycentricity, Performance and Planning: Concepts, Evidence and Policy in Barcelona, Catalonia

Polycentricity, Performance and Planning: Concepts, Evidence and Policy in Barcelona, Catalonia

Movilidad residencial en tiempos de crisis. El caso de la Región Metropolitana de Barcelona.

This article focuses on the effect of the crisis on residential mobility from the study of intrametropolitan migration of the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona. Despite the apparent stability of residential mobility after the outbreak of the crisis, in-depth analysis shows that the crisis reduces significantly the mobility of foreigners, the group 25-34 years and those older than 55 years, as well as movements to sprawl municipalities. In contrast, there is an increase in immigration to compact areas. The conclusion is that we are in a time of transition in which the sprawl areas still show net migration gains, despite the progressive decrease in immigration. Instead, compact municipalities have still negative net migration rates, although they are increasing their immigration. In the case of the RMB, the crisis works by slowing the process of residential dispersion, while enhancing values in compact areas that earn attractive as a destination for intra-metropolitan migration.

Making polycentrism: Governance innovation in small and medium-sized cities in the West Midlands and Barcelona metropolitan regions

The development of metropolitan regions shows increasing patterns of polycentrism, with growing relevance of small and medium-sized municipalities, suburbs and outskirts, which become economic subcentres within enlarging metropolitan realities. Nevertheless, governance analysis has focused primarily on the role of central cities or on the metropolitan region as a whole. This article focuses on the social configuration of small and medium-sized municipalities as collective actors and their role in the emergence of polycentrism. The article analyses how the economic, political and social hegemonic actors in these cities organise innovative strategies to ensure the centrality of their area in the metropolitan region presenting the analysis of two areas in two European metropolitan regions; the Black Country in the West Midlands conurbation (United Kingdom) and the Vallès Occidental area in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (Spain). In both areas, innovative forms of governance oriented towards local economic development and social cohesion have emerged involving municipalities, chambers of commerce, trade unions and third sector actors. Beyond the implementation of local policies these forms of governance reinforce specific scales for economic agglomeration to reinforce subcentrality of certain municipalities. The analysis of these cases shows that there are dynamics of competitiveness and collaboration within metropolitan regions in which subcentres are trying to compete with the central city and but at the same time taking profit from the overall metropolitan strategy in the global arena.

Sociocultural valuation of ecosystem services to improve protected area management: a multi-method approach applied to Catalonia, Spain

The notion of ecosystem services is considered useful for integrating perceptions and values into decision-making on environment and nature. Sociocultural factors have been suggested to explain perceptions and values assigned to ecosystem services. We examine this by undertaking a sociocultural valuation of ecosystem services provided by the natural park of Sant Llorenc del Munt, located at the edge of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region. Four methods are used, namely a review of the literature on ecosystem services, non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and a valuation survey among visitors. We assess whether visitors and other stakeholders understand the term ecosystem service, finding that the concept is rather unknown or misunderstood. Among the 28 ecosystem services identified, habitat and cultural services were the most valued. We statistically identify socioeconomic characteristics of visitors that have a main influence on their valuation of ecosystem services. We further assess diverging preferences of all stakeholders that might give rise to conflicting views about policies for protected areas. We draw lessons about the usefulness of the multi-method approach and about the management of protected areas.

Examining the role of landscape structure and dynamics in alien plant invasion from urban Mediterranean coastal habitats

This paper aims to disentangle the effects of both current landscape structure and recent land use-change on alien plant invasion in urban Mediterranean coastal habitats. Patches of four habitat types (rock outcrops, sand dunes, scrublands and forests) of different sizes and surrounding landscape compositions were selected along the coast of the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (NE Spain). Attributes of habitat patches, historical (1956) and current landscape composition around them, land-cover changes (1956–2005) and other environmental and geographic factors within these patches were obtained. The association of these attributes with alien plant richness, abundance and composition was investigated using GLM and CCA. Alien species richness was mostly explained by patch size and shape and built-up area proportion from 1956 and 2005 in a 50m buffer around patches. Alien species abundance was mostly related to patch shape, temperature, rainfall, land-cover changes within patches and cropland cover of 1956 in a 50m buffer around patches. Alien species composition was primary related to habitat type, temperature, land-cover changes within patches and the composition of the surrounding landscape. Results suggest that landscape factors affect alien species richness and abundance differently, which are indicative of species colonization and spread, respectively. Landscape history positively affects both colonization and spread, with evidence for a colonization credit related with past urban cover, and the association between recent patch dynamics and present aliens spread. Results highlight the importance of including landscape structure and dynamics in the management of plant invasions in coastal Mediterranean habitats, especially in metropolitan regions.

Landscape As A Resource For Squat Farming

Abstract The contemporary Urban Agriculture (UA) is represented by a range of diverse farming typologies taking place in the urban environment. Nowadays, there is an unconventional form of UA called squat farming. The research object of this paper is represented by the case study of Can Masdeu which stands for a squatted and cultivated land at the northern city border of Barcelona. The goal of our Short Term Scientific Mission carried out in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region was to define and study diverse typologies of UA at different levels and scales. One of these types is represented by the ongoing phenomenon of squat farming. Concerning this form, there are two main research questions: 1) How are landscape and urban structures influenced and formed by the activity of land cultivation? and 2) How is the social dimension of squat farming structured – who are the users, what is their motivation, aim and vision? To answer the first research question, we applied spatial and perceptual analyses, and concerning the second research question, the users have been interviewed within discussions and questionnaires. The results include characteristics of spatial and social dimensions of squat farming described on the case study of Can Masdeu.

Long Term Effects of Traffic Noise on Mortality in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, 2004-2007

Several studies have found an association between traffic noise and adverse health effects. Although most of them relate to morbidity, some also show an association with cardiovascular, respiratory and, even, infant mortality. Some authors question these relations because of the high association between traffic noise and air pollution. However, recently several studies have shown an independent short-term association between noise and cardiovascular and respiratory mortality from the effect of air pollutants that are routinely measured. Our objective here is to provide evidence of an independent long-term association between traffic noise and cause-specific mortality. We used a case-control design with individual data. As cases, we use deaths from COPD, hypertension, diabetes mellitus type II, cardiovascular and ischemic heart disease mortality (for which we georeferenced their address) between 2004 and 2007 in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (BMR), Spain. As controls, we used deaths by AIDS and external causes, matched by sex and age. We used the annual mean of daytime noise level for RGM and controlled for confounders: i) air pollutants (NO2, PM10 and benzene); material deprivation (at a census tract level); and several land use variables. We explicitly controlled for spatial misalignment (i.e. the response and all the exposure measurements had different spatial locations); heterogeneity; and spatio-temporal dependency. Analyses were done separately for men and for women. As a preliminary results, we estimated a risk increase of COPD mortality of 6.01% (95% CI 3.76% - 8.17%) for an increased annual mean of daytime interquartile range of 7.613 dB(A). This risk was not confounded by any variable No effect was found for women and for subjects aged <65 years. Our results suggest that the associations indicating the long-term effects of exposure to traffic noise are not spurious.

Looking Backwards into a Mediterranean Edge Environment: Landscape Changes in El Congost Valley (Catalonia), 1850-2005

Abstract We examine the evolution from the mid-nineteenth century to the present of the cultural landscape in two Catalan townships that jointly constitute an edge environment between Mediterranean plain and mountain. This environmental edge has changed over time, from a border between an agricultural plain confronting an area of forestry and livestock-raising in the mid-nineteenth century, to a limit of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region confronting two 'natural' protected sites in the present. Over a century and a half land use changes in this area have brought about the two main, but superficially 'opposed' dynamics that characterise landscape evolution throughout Catalonia and great parts of Europe today: intensification and abandonment. The most salient ecological impact of both processes has been the loss of landscape mosaics. In the plain those mosaics interwove cereal cropping with vineyards and olive orchards together with patches of woodland, scrubland and pastureland into an agricultural land matrix. In the mountains, a woodland matrix of holm oaks and pines became cleared through timber and firewood extraction, and the pruning of branches for charcoal making, creating a mixture of open forest articulated by grazing areas, cropland and scrub. Both sides of the edge interlinked, and jointly played a key role as ecological connectors to maintain biodiversity. From the 1960s onwards the ecological dynamics attendant upon the abandonment of the prevailing integrated management of forests, livestock breeding and cropland has led to a significant loss of these landscape mosaics. In spite of the transformation of much of this area into natural protected sites, the growth of a uniform and continuous reforested woodland canopy, directly confronted with urban sprawl, is endangering its richness in terms of species - such as Mediterranean orchids, whose habitats are disappearing.

Policy mix to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of commuting: A study for Barcelona, Spain

Commuting or the journey to work makes up an important part of transport. It should therefore be a target of climate policies that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport. To design an effective climate-transport policy package, this article constructs a framework consisting of two core aspects of commuting patterns driven by five categories of underlying factors. Policy implications are derived from this. The set of factors and policies are then studied for the Barcelona Metropolitan Region in Spain. We find that it is essential to limit dispersion of the population and provide spatially adequate public transport services. In addition, effects of imperfections in labour and housing markets, and commuter bias in transport preferences towards car use, should be addressed in policy.

Changing patters of water consumption in the suburban Barcelona: lifestiles and welfare as explanatory factors

Atlantic gardens and swimming pools constitute one of the most relevant features of a new phase in the history of the urbanization process in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona, coinciding with the real state “madness”, by which the traditionally compact urban form typical of Mediterranean cultures lose ground to more disperse patterns of settlement characteristic of Anglo-Saxon countries. The change in the urban form also bears a noticeable relationship with changing lifestyles more and more akin to the suburban landscapes of many areas of Atlantic Europe and above all North America. Low density housing with gardens and swimming pools are associated with a better quality of life and considered as positional goods, giving the owners the status and prestige that is absent from other urban forms. In this paper I will therefore illustrate how new “suburbia lifestyles” linked to water use are gaining terrain in a geographical, social and cultural context that traditionally has been quite conservative in the use of this resource. I will show also how new, water-related lifestyles are endowed also with a strong income component. Thus high income households prefer and can afford more water-consuming Atlantic gardens with swimming pools whereas lower income households have to resort to more climate-adapted species in what constitutes a growing socio-spatial differentiation.

Local regulations on alternative water sources: greywater and rainwater use in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona

Alternative water resources are gaining momentum in Catalonia (north-east Spain) in an effort to promote water conservation and build resilience against drought episodes. Since 2002 more than 50 municipalities (summing up more than 1.3 million people) have approved a water saving ordinance that involves the installation of rainwater harvesting and/or greywater reuse systems in new buildings. These new technologies trigger important transformations in the existing water cycle including institutional and social changes related with water decentralization. Drawing on interviews with local environmental managers and survey data from rainwater harvesters and greywater users, this paper analyses the social and technical learning generated during the implementation of the regulations and the main impediments and barriers that need to be overcome to control health risks and promote social acceptance of these alternative water sources.

Households within the residential mobility process: the case of the Barcelona metropolitan region

Within the residential mobility process, household structure is one of the main explanatory variables of location choice. In large metropolitan areas, such as the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (BMR), there are presently clearly new divergent residence settlement trends. While family households move to new suburbs, single- person ones and couples with no children go to urban centers or remain in them. Therefore metropolitan municipalities tend to be demographically segregated. Residential mobility is also one of the most important factors in metropolitan municipality growth, and household structure directly affects housing demand characteristics. Results show strong residential dispersion and a household structure territorial specialization.

Meeting the Needs of Regional Train Travelers: A Comparison of Four Regions in Europe

Regional train services are largely organized at the regional level in Europe, but the objectives, strategies and implementation details vary widely from one country to another. This paper relies on a comparison exercise performed within the evaluation of the Rhône-Alps Region's train policy, comparing four regions in four European countries, all responsible for organizing and financing regional passenger train services: the metropolitan region of Barcelona in Spain, the Rhine-Ruhr area in Germany, the Canton of Zurich in Switzerland, and the Rhône-Alps region in France. It shows how strategic and tactical decisions taken on transport issues are shaped by local and national contexts. How do the authorities get value for money from the train operators? And how do they meet the needs of the regional travellers? The comparison shows that good results (in terms of satisfaction of passenger and policy makers, and of value for money) can be obtained by the application of a regime of competition for the market, as well as through direct negotiation without any competition. However, the way in which the system is implemented is vital for its success in both cases.

Pautas territoriales de la fecundidad en la Región Metropolitana de Barcelona (1986-2010)

The paper’s main aim is to analyse fertility differences within a metropolitan area. Our initial hypothesis is that, due to two recent and intense processes, international migration and suburbanisation, intra-metropolitan demographic behaviour is increasingly spatially segmented. To this aim we have used the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (RMB) as a study case and have calculated the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for 26 metropolitan subareas. Results confirm our hypothesis as the core city has lower fertility rates than the rest of metropolitan municipalities, while those belonging to the suburban inner-ring, where a large amount of immigrant women have settled, currently have the highest rates.

Spatial Patterns of Land Use Changes Across a Mediterranean Metropolitan Landscape: Implications for Biodiversity Management

Land use and land cover change (LUCC) is an acknowledged cause of the current biodiversity crisis, but the link between LUCC and biodiversity conservation remains largely unknown at the regional scale, especially due to the traditional lack of consistent biodiversity data. We provide a methodological approach for assessing this link through defining a set of major pressures on biodiversity from LUCC and evaluating their extent, distribution, and association with a set of physical factors. The study was performed in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (MRB, NE of Spain) between 1956 and 2000. We generated a LUCC map for the time period, which was reclassified into a set of pressures on biodiversity (forestation, deforestation, crop abandonment, and urbanization). We then explored the association of these pressures with a set of physical factors using redundancy analysis (RDA). Pressures encompassed 38.8% of the MRB area. Urbanization and forestation were the dominating pressures, followed by crop abandonment and deforestation. RDA showed a significant distribution gradient of these pressures in relation to the studied physical factors: while forestation and deforestation are concentrated in remote mountain areas, urbanization mainly occurs in lowlands and especially on the coast, and close to previous urban centers and roads. Unchanged areas are concentrated in rainy and relatively remote mountain areas. Results also showed a dramatic loss of open habitats and of the traditional land use gradient, both featuring Mediterranean landscapes and extremely important for their biodiversity conservation. Implications of these results for biodiversity management are finally discussed.

Metabolisms of injustice: municipal solid-waste management and environmental equity in Barcelona's Metropolitan Region

Environmental justice studies that focus on the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) typically examine the unequal distribution of associated health and environmental risks in minority social groups and the political processes that generate these inequalities. With the aim to complement current views on the field, in this work, we explore whether there is an issue of environmental justice in municipal systems' grade of self-sufficiency in treating the MSW that they generate and in their effort to close their material cycles. The methodology used is based on the concept of urban metabolism and is applied to 12 coastal municipalities of Barcelona's Metropolitan Region in Spain. The metabolism of the MSW flows of each system is analysed to examine (i) the system's efficiency to close its MSW cycles, corresponding to an indicator of environmental sustainability, and (ii) the MSW export and import flows, as an indicator of social sustainability. The results demonstrate a positive correlation between socioeconomic status and the externalisation of MSW treatment-related hazards. The proposed indicator proves to be an excellent tool for the evaluation of both the environmental and social performance of a system considering MSW management.

Spatial and Socio-environmental Dynamics of Catalan Regional Planning from a Multivariate Statistical Analysis Using 1980s and 2000s Data

This article summarizes the protocol applied to analyse the spatial consequences of diverse regional plans included in the General Spatial Planning of Catalonia (GSPC) municipalities since 1985. The main aims of the GSPC were to achieve a more balanced distribution of population, avoiding Barcelona metropolitan region congestion, coastal overcrowding and mountain areas depopulation, and to improve mobility infrastructures and social welfare. The methodology used was based on factor analysis that reduced 30 socioeconomic and geographic variables provided by different sources into a smaller number of common factors. Afterwards a non-hierarchical clustering was employed to simplify the analysis of dynamics. The six first common factors retained in the model explained the 82.6% of total variance. After labelling them, six clusters were mapped to describe the most important dynamics: urban sprawl, urbanalization, depopulation, reterritorialization and coastalization. Finally, some socio-environmental consequences of such dynamics are discussed.