Madrid Metropolitan Forest: The Southern River Parks

Southern spring, generated infrastructure

The transdisciplinary proposal was the winner of the International Competition for the Metropolitan Forest of Madrid, Lot 4 “The Southern River Parks”. A jury made up of 24 experts selected Manantial Sur, Regenerated Infrastructure for being a “complete project in all its components that has generated debate about the role of water, forestry and agriculture”.

The Metropolitan Forest. A forest belt that bypasses the city of Madrid, relying on existing green areas and those classified by urban planning to achieve a green corridor that will run within the municipality and the edge of the municipal term, always seeking the greatest possible ecological and spatial continuity, in coexistence with the multiple infrastructures that have historically been occupying and dividing that territory.

The proposal for the green belt of Madrid, the first major metropolitan intervention to mitigate the effects of climate change, is born with the aim of recovering degraded spaces and increasing afforestation / reforestation and providing universal access to public space. A Forest that responds to socio-ecological challenges, using water as the driving force for project and planning. A project under the framework of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (ODS)

“The Southern River Parks”.

Lot 4

The area of Lot 4 corresponds to the area located to the south of the city, comprising the areas of the Manzanares Linear Park, the Arroyo de La Gavia and the hills that surround it and the agricultural border of Madrid with Getafe.

In addition to its peripheral location, the southern Manzanares basin and its topography have been used as one of the main entry routes for the major mobility infrastructures of the city of Madrid, and in its condition as the city’s “drain”, as ideal location for treatment plants. The social consequences of having taken advantage of these conditions have been the accumulation of neighborhoods with the lowest per capita income in the city, located in these less comfortable areas and, on many occasions, with a deficit of public facilities. The Metropolitan Forest is the opportunity to change the perspective of these facilities. Make them positive and even take advantage of them to introduce some equipments of not only metropolitan scale, but also local.

The southern area of Madrid along the Manzanares riverbed is a place of infrastructures that have divided the territory; but it is also a space of opportunities, full of resources, not only water and ecological linked to its channels, but also historical, agricultural, horticultural, archaeological and social to expand and re-growth.

There is no landscape without water, a good landscape project is not one that paints a green space, nor one that builds large architectural ‘follies’ in a free space. A good landscape project is a water, soil, vegetation and other –social, historical and patrimonial- resources management project over time.

The design of water management is the skeleton that allowes the construction of a monumental landscape that this area of the city deserves. The designed water system is an artificial and natural hybrid that has three sources: gravity drainage from rainwater runoff, upstream river intakes for orchards, and water from the treatment plants.

‘Manantial Sur’ is a proposal for social and ecological-landscape growth: The social growth recovers pedestrian connectivities and creates civic centralities. The ecological growth promotes the conditions for the emergence of fauna and flora biodiversity as well as a large monumental forest based on better use and management of water resources. The growth of mobility infrastructures comes from understanding them as broad ecological corridors that make up an agroforestry and social mosaic.

It is an opportunity for Madrid to rethink its green territory as a manager of water and nature, creator of microclimates, promoter of healthy habits and transformer of treatment plants into new springs that generate more life.

Essays