Sant Climent de Llobregat (ES)

How can the site contribute to a productive city?

Sant Climent’s industrial zone is located in the study area, alongside the project site. Although it is still active, the crisis as a whole, but particularly the crisis in the textile industry, has caused a degradation of its buildings and associated facilities.
The current planning guidelines enable new economic activities in this area on the basis of pre-existing sports uses in a section of the proposed site. The obsolescence of the existing sports facilities, now unused, and the town’s privileged location in the Baix Llobregat district —near the sea and close to high-density residential areas— make it quite feasible to propose new sports and leisure-related activities which may act as a driving force for the local productive economy.
Another aim of the proposed land development is to redirect traffic away from the industrial area, currently the entrance point to the city. This would solve some of the traffic problems currently generated in the economic zone, improve the parking facilities, accessibility and image of the sector, and have side benefits for good governance.

City strategy

Sant Climent de Llobregat is a unique outer metropolitan municipality with a large agricultural economy, notable landscape values and a good quality of life. However, its main entrance point from Viladecans runs along a narrow corridor parallel to the Riera de Sant Climent stream, flanked by old industrial buildings that cause traffic congestion and seriously compromise the city's image.
The city has a long-standing aspiration for a new entrance point with a ring road and two bridges to surmount the difficulties posed by this riverside road alignment. The project is seen as an opportunity to provide solutions for a range of challenges: new housing, new economic activity, a new urban and forest landscape, and a new image for the entrance to the city.

Site definition

The site is in the Sant Climent de Llobregat municipality, part of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, at the entrance to the city from Viladecans on road BV2003. This is the natural exit point from the San Climent valley down towards the Llobregat River delta. The town’s industries are located here, spreading across the entire right bank of the Riera de Sant Climent stream.
On the left bank is the old soccer field, now in disuse, the heritage-listed Can Molins farmhouse and cherry orchards, vestiges of an agricultural sector that once covered about 9 Ha- all the flat land and terraces in the municipality. Between the new fire station at the start of the industrial zone and the turn-off to the city centre, the road meanders alongside the Riera, with the old municipal football field and the Can Molins farmhouse grounds to the left. This situation is an opportunity to study a new entrance to the city on the left side of the Riera and a new development sector, making the most of the public ownership of most of this land: municipal in the case of the football field and INCASÒL in the case of the Can Molins estate. The boundary with the forested sector can be considered to be flexible once the planning proposal has been studied. In order to work on this proposal, the study area includes the industrial sector, the project site, and the tree-covered part of the estate, in a broad sense.

How is production inserted in the urban diversity programme?

The construction of a new road access to the town will help to resolve several issues at the same time and poses two crucial challenges:
1) How to resolve the landscape and environmental issues, a relevant aspect due to the physical and topographical features of the sector,
2) How to ensure the viability of the proposal, especially in financial terms, taking into account the cost of the infrastructure associated with a dual carriageway road.
Assuming that both challenges will be addressed in the submitted proposals, this sector is expected to resolve three issues at the same time:
1) A new sports (or leisure) activity that can act as a driving force for the local economy, promoted by the private sector,
2) Inclusive housing development, with private and public dwellings at the service of the general and local housing policies, 
3) Improvement of the urban and forested landscape around the main entrance to the town.
An additional challenge is posed by the heritage-listed Can Molins farmhouse, whose future uses should be addressed in the submitted proposals, and the possibility of a Modification to the Master Plan to permit proposals that modify different zoning areas.

Aerial view of the project site 

Project site - unused spaces

Confrontation of natural and urban elementsStreetscape and buildings typologies