Valladolid come punto d’incontro di paesaggi: dalle letture a scala intermedia alla pianificazione del territorio

The current European urban condition requires that those who study it do it through new paradigms. These are needed to effectively explain the development of the city and to found the project proposals on the reality of the territory rather than following obsolete disciplinary mantra. This paper is focused on a planning experience whose territorial perspective is based on a geographical intermediate scale and on landscape approach. These are key aspects to understand and explain the specific characteristics of an area. Which is why overcoming the very local scale of administrative boundaries is necessary to describe ever-changing, transient phenomena. Landscape’s intermediate geography proves the most effective tool to study the relation between contemporary urban concepts (territory metropolisation, metapolis) and the regional ecological structure. Our study focuses on Valladolid (Spain): a medium-sized city with an important historical profile and an industrial and administrative center. To work in this field as engineers and planners (PGOU, 2012 and DOTVaEnt, 1998 and rev. 2006) new strategies had to be thought, both for the city and its metropolitan area, tackling urban problems in a singular context of crisis. The work is based on the potential of the city location: the intersection of two productive corridors at territorial scale. On the one hand, the industrial corridor follows an inter-modal east-west axis and represents the most important production area of the region; the River Duero on the other hand, with the characteristic vineyards landscape and agricultural productions of excellence. Failing to understand this structure would prevent causes and growth processes’ analysis, regarding the city and its role in the territory at different scales (a double centrality is at stake: in the emerging urban area and in the region). Strong contrasts characterize the territory of Valladolid but it is also a mediation space between recognizable elements belonging to the two corridors (the industrial estates and major infrastructures, the vineyards) that juxtapose and influence each other in the urban area of Valladolid. This case study sets out to show that only an unconventional landscape vision is indispensible to analyse the inter-scalar condition of some phenomena. In the contemporary territory, these may influence the urban structure, and can be drivers of the future development’s quality.