Author(s)

J. J. Galan Vivas, G. Peiro Frias, A. Fernandez Morote

Abstract

The Strategic Plan for the Calderona Mountain Range (Valencia, Spain) covers an area of 200 km² including 5 municipalities located at the northern edge of Valencia’s Metropolitan Area. The Plan deals with a wide diversity of aspects, being ecology and sustainable development their common denominators.

Thus, the analysis of the different territorial layers (forestry, agriculture, natural environment, urban planning, landscape, heritage, tourism and public use, mobility and infrastructures, and economic activity) was developed from an ecological and sustainability focused point of view which is afterwards extended in the definition of regional strategies and in a set of ten thematic plans and eighteen pilot projects.

In particular, sustainability, the structural role of ecology and the effective enhancement of the different existing and potential ecosystems, permeate the whole Strategic Plan but are, in particular, the central elements of the Territorial and Landscape Plan, which includes the definition of a regional and local Green Infrastructure; of the Natural Environment Plan, which identifies the existing and potential plant communities and establishes the conditions for their adequate improvement and maintenance, and, finally, the Sustainable Development Plan, that analyzes the present flows of energy and resources and explores the territorial and urban models which would permit the reinforcement of internal metabolisms and the reduction of ecological footprints.

Keywords

sustainable planning, sustainable development, sustainable metabolisms, green infrastructure, management of natural areas, ecological footprint, ecological planning, public use of natural areas, productive use of natural areas, biodiversity