Infrastructures for a more sustainable constructed environment. The conversion of the N340 roadway on the Costa Tropical of Granada (Spain)

Abstract

The coexistence of nature and artifice in metropolitan contexts is currently an important issue with many possibilities to think about. From the perspective of a transport infrastructure project this reflection should facilitate a methodological evolution, aimed at creating a new technology that understands design as a combination between the demands of citizens, and the spatial offer of the place. This is the case of the N340 roadway along the coast of the Granada province, a territory with a population of about one hundred thousand people that doubles in the summer. Besides tourism, intensive agriculture is the basis of economic development. However, the lack of both rail connection and through the 'Autovía del Mediterráneo' has allowed today a space of more than 50 kilometers of coastline with very different conditions we might call "pre-tourist", without massive urbanization and with a considerable potential for change. This infrastructure is channeling all movements by road of the so-called Costa Tropical with the concentration of the metropolitan, local and even regional flows, which leads to a high congestion, mono functionality, lack of permeability and barrier effect, among others. The completion of the 'Autovía del Mediterráneo' is opening up an amazing opportunity to transform this axis that implies refocusing on the natural character of the coast and highlighting out its ability to pass through urban environments relationally and progressively.

Are we able to rehabilitate insufficient and aggressive urban infrastructures, converting them in to secondary ones in relation to other more powerful and recently built ones and giving them a conciliatory character? Research that derives from the Master of Urban Planning of Granada, explores the intermodal coexistence of pedestrian and vehicular mobility, the intensification of mass transit systems and interchanges, improving accessibility, incorporating the landscape as a structuring element of space through the visualization of distant territory and comprehension of the environmental network.