Madrid City Council is preparing a radical change in the capital’s urban planning to double or even triple the number of 150,000 homes currently planned to be built in the various urban development projects already proposed and approved, according to several experts familiar with the municipal initiative who revealed it to EL PAÍS. The City Council confirms that José Luis Martínez-Almeida (PP), mayor of Madrid, is advancing with the so-called Municipal Strategic Plan (PEM), a regulatory revolution that will also allow more homes to be built in completed neighborhoods and increase the percentage of protected housing. The City Council’s work, which has already been presented to different stakeholders and will be initially approved in early 2027, raises many doubts at a regulatory, business, legal, and potential speculation level, according to various sources in the real estate sector, although it receives almost unanimous support regarding the need for densification.
Martínez-Almeida’s team ruled out modifying the city’s main urban planning regulation, the General Urban Planning Plan (PGOU) of 1997, due to the lack of agility and the need for long periods to change that law. In coordination with the Community of Madrid, chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP), the municipal executive has sought a formula that quickly allows for a legislative revolution to support housing densification in the face of the housing emergency and the city’s demographic growth. Thus, the regional government is preparing the ley líder (Law for the Promotion and Balanced Development of the Region), which lays the groundwork for the future PEM to be normatively above the PGOU, meaning that this strategic plan will prevail over the current general plan.
The municipal government wants to anticipate the city’s urban planning needs with the plan. The main problem it seeks to solve is the high projected demographic growth —of almost 100,000 people annually until 2039 in the region as a whole, according to the regional executive’s calculations—, in addition to the rising house prices, among other reasons due to high demand pressure on a scarce supply. Likewise, it wants to modify already approved new neighborhood projects to intensify construction there and change the obsolete urban planning model of the nineties, which was conceived more with car transport in mind and is environmentally unsustainable.
Borja Carabante, the City Council’s urban planning delegate and head of the strategic plan’s development, believes that one of the opportunities all cities have is to intensify residential use (the number of homes per hectare). “Approximately, within the M-30, the net density of the residential fabric is around 144 homes per hectare, and outside the M-30, it is 87 homes per hectare. If Madrid has 98% of its land consolidated, we have to grow outwards, but also by intensifying housing, or generating transformation operations that allow for the intensification of residential use,” he tells EL PAÍS.
The strategic plan focuses on new neighborhoods to be built, where 150,000 homes are currently planned. But there, the buildability ratio is 36 homes per hectare, much lower than in the rest of the city. Of all these future areas to be built, the largest land bank is found in what is known as the Southeast Strategy (which includes the developments of Los Berrocales, Valdecarros, Los Ahijones, El Cañaveral, and Los Cerros), totaling more than 100,000 units. “As stated in the PEM draft, there are 3,380 hectares of development sectors in southeast Madrid in management or urbanization phases with densities around 35 homes per hectare that could be rethought under a compact city logic with densities around 70 homes per hectare, more efficient from the point of view of resource use and higher residential density,” Carabante points out. This would mean doubling the number of homes to be built by cranes. People close to the plan’s development indicate that this ratio could even be tripled.
In terms of inhabitants, it would also represent a significant leap, from the almost 500,000 new residents expected in future developments, to doubling or tripling this population figure for those neighborhoods, in a city of 3.5 million inhabitants today.
The urban planning delegate assures that it is premature to state how much this buildability ratio will increase in the new neighborhoods. Among other issues, calculations regarding transport infrastructure and future water availability are pending, experts explain. “We must analyze area by area,” Carabante states. To develop the PEM, the City Council has engineering firm Arup and technology company Sice as advisors.
Read more Rajoy faces accusations from his former treasurer Bárcenas in the Kitchen trial
The strategic plan also addresses the possibility of increasing buildability in recent developments such as Sanchinarro, Las Tablas, or Carabanchel, as well as consolidated neighborhoods with latent capacity like Moratalaz, San Blas, Usera, or Villaverde, and even in areas with intensive public transport such as Chamartín, Legazpi, Méndez Álvaro, Aluche, Conde de Casal, and Valdebebas, summarizes Alejandro Bermúdez, CEO of the consultancy Atlas Real Estate Analytics. “Intensification is the central lever of the PEM to generate housing without consuming more land, based on the premise that Madrid has practically exhausted its expansion capacity,” this expert highlights.
Uncertainties
Specialists analyzing the PEM, whose draft is public but for which an extended version still needs to be written, highlight that these changes open up various uncertainties. One of them is that there could be a halt in current housing development in new areas because real estate companies and landowners might wait for regulatory changes that could benefit them by intensifying the number of homes to be built. This is something the urban planning delegate does not believe will happen. People familiar with the plan indicate that the success of this part depends on the City Council being very quick to approve the initiative and also in opening specific periods during which these changes can be implemented.
Likewise, it is pointed out that the novelty in this way of legislating, with a strategic plan above the PGOU, must overcome the legal uncertainties it opens up for social and economic agents, as well as a potential judicialization by groups, companies, or individuals who see their interests or those of the city harmed.
In this regard, Antonio Giraldo, a PSOE councilor, criticizes the Government team because opposition political groups are completely excluded from the drafting of this strategic plan. “We consider it an anomaly,” Giraldo laments, as even in previous revisions of the general plan, other parties participated. The socialist urban planning official also warns of the need for vigilance so that the City Council does not interpret the change as a “merely speculative tool serving particular and private interests,” instead of benefiting the city.
If you have questions, suggestions, or simply want to tell us your case, you can send us an email to vivienda@elpais.es.
The data you provide will be processed by EDICIONES EL PAÍS, S.L.U., (C/ Miguel Yuste, 40, 28037-Madrid), for the purpose of managing your questions and/or testimonies and preparing informative content. You may exercise your recognized data protection rights through the address dpo@prisa.com by proving your identity and identifying the right you wish to exercise. For more information, consult the Privacy Policy.
Read more Marina and Andrii, bomb-proof love on the Donbas front
