Planning principles for urban growth in the Palma Master Plan: “reversing urbanism” and urban regeneration of the existing city to limit land consumption

Abstract

The spatial organisation of the pieces of urban growth is one of the fundamental contents of any General Plan. However, it should be noted that, in the current circumstances characterised by a worrying over-dimensioning of the developable land consigned in the municipal planning in force, the incitement to its contraction must become an inexcusable exercise in territorial ethics if we wish to avoid the propagation of the pathological urban dilution that would be caused by its development. This contractive guideline is closely linked to the commitment to the qualitative renovation of the existing city, which must act as a stimulus to exercise a kind of “reverse urbanism” aimed at restricting land classified as developable to that which is strictly necessary to accommodate the demands that have not been met in urban land. This text sets out to explain the planning strategies developed by the General Plan of Palma to reverse the usual “expansive tendencies” that have characterised the urban planning promoted in previous decades.