Territorial plan and project in the Central Counties of Catalonia. Designing tools for a new scale of city

Abstract

Spatial planning in Catalonia is regulated by a legal framework that dissociates urban planning from regional planning. However, those responsible for the Territorial Planning Programme of the Catalan government (2003-2010) reformulated the interrelationship between the two legal systems through a new multi-scalar, spatial model. By analyzing four plans drafted for the same territory (the sub-region of the Central Counties of Catalonia), the article seeks to define the projected coherence between the design elements of the two different planning scales. The analysis resulted in eighteen thematic and spatial variables that define the specificity of the territorial project. The projectÍ€™s articulation on both planning scales allows planners to consider the regional territory as a city, or at least as an integrated space, albeit with different intensities of urbanity.