The Urban Agenda of Andalusia promotes urban sustainability through an articulated network of cities and rural areas
Summary
• Andalusia is a sub-national territory or autonomous community located in the south of Spain, next to the Mediterranean Sea. 86% of its population lives in municipalities with more than a thousand inhabitants and the region has a powerful system of intermediate cities.
• Its Urban Agenda promotes urban sustainability objectives in Andalusia through its Urban Reference System, made up of a network articulated at the territorial level between cities and rural areas, promoting cooperation processes to consolidate polynuclear organizational systems.
The Urban Agenda of Andalusia constitutes the strategic framework to guide public policies towards sustainable and integrated urban development in the Spanish Sub-National Government of Andalusia. It was approved in 2018 and its Action Plan and monitoring indicators are currently under development. Aligned with the higher-level Urban Agendas (the Spanish Urban Agenda, the European Urban Agenda and the New Urban Agenda), as well as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it serves as reference, through its objectives and principles of sustainable urbanization adapted to the cities and territorial characteristics of Andalusia, for the local urban agendas promoted by Andalusian municipalities.
Andalusia has a strong system of cities, from regional centres or metropolitan areas to mid-coastal and inland cities, as well as a network of rural municipalities that occupy 64.7% of the territory and where 17.4% of the population lives. Given the advantages of an integrated territorial system, defined in the Territorial Model of the Andalusian Land Management Plan, the Agenda promotes reinforcing and advancing the sustainability of its System of Cities, in order to create territorial networks that favour interurban connectivity and allow that the population and productive activities are distributed in the territory in a spatially and functionally balanced way. This Territorial Model advocates especially for enhancing the role of cities in the development of the region and for a network operation through cooperation processes that gradually consolidate polynuclear organizational systems.
To promote and update this Territorial Model, the Andalusian Urban Agenda developed its Urban Reference System that allows a differentiated application of urban sustainability policies, taking into account the scale and complexity of Andalusian towns and cities. In this sense, the following components were identified: metropolitan areas (where 70% of the Andalusian population is located), systems of medium inland cities (where 15% of the population is located), a system of medium coastal cities (which constitute the territory with the greatest urban dynamism and population growth, concentrating 607,631 inhabitants), a system of rural settlements with an urban centre (which encompasses a population of almost 400,000 inhabitants and has generally experienced a reduction in its population in recent years) and a system of rural settlements without an urban centre (with a total population of 352,082 inhabitants, which, like the previous system, experiences the most significant population losses in Andalusia). This Urban Reference System offers the possibility of differentiating the actions related to urban policies according to the reality of each of these components.
One of the purposes of the Andalusian Urban Agenda is to have a practical utility for local governments, facilitating a better link with the Spanish Urban Agenda, the Urban Agenda of the European Union, the New Urban Agenda and other development agendas. The Agenda seeks to effectively take advantage of the possibilities that Andalusian cities offer to the progress and well-being of society, as well as to prepare municipalities to cope with solvency in a context conditioned by the complexity of future challenges, such as climate change, sustainable mobility, social and territorial inequality, access to housing, the rational use of natural resources, etc. In this sense, the Agenda represents an important advance by starting from updated diagnoses and having as reference the objectives proposed in the Urban Agendas of higher level.
Currently, the work being done is the preparation of the first Action Plan to translate into concrete measures the actions that the Andalusian Government will carry out for the achievement of the SDGs, in accordance with the strategic lines established in the Urban Agenda. In addition, indicators are being identified, selected and organized to periodically monitor the execution of actions and evaluate the results and effects of the implementation of the Agenda.
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Memoria final: Alineación de la Agenda Urbana de Andalucía con la Agenda Urbana Española
Alineación de la Agenda Urbana de Andalucía con la Agenda Urbana Española