Rethink the Litoral Urbanization

The Urban Development Plan for the Coastal System of Catalonia

Abstract

The urbanization of the coastal areas constitutes, no doubt, one of the most characteristic features of the transformation of the territory in the countries of southern Europe during the last decades. The containment and management of this process, which generates environmental, urban and economic costs, requires the adoption of new urban planning and management instruments. The article analyzes this problem from the example of the Urban Planning Master Plan for the Coastal System of Catalonia (PDUSC) in effect since 2005. The work is divided into 4 sections: the first describes the process of urbanization of the Catalan coast, in the second one exposes the need to have instruments of supramunicipal planning to guide and correct this process, in the third the objectives and the method of PDUSC are detailed and in the fourth it is analyzed what their results have been after four years of validity. Some conclusions of a methodological nature on the utility of supramunicipal planning instruments in the current phase of the urbanization process close the article.