Sustainable urban development in Madrid New North

Related theme: Soil and groundwater, Site development 

Madrid New North is an urban transformation project planned for the northern area of Madrid. It is a hugely ambitious project and one of the largest urban developments in Europe. 

Challenge - Phase 1 ESA 

The urban development company Crea Madrid Nuevo Norte (CreaMNN) asked TAUW to assist with the Phase 1 Environmental Site Assessment for the intended redevelopment of the location and to identify potential liabilities arising from current and former industrial and dumping sites. 

The site spans almost 5.5 km from north to south and is actually a patchwork of over a hundred separate plots. These have different owners and accommodate a range of different business activities. We had to obtain each owner’s permission to assess their plot.  The main difficulty was following government regulations, because these are established for single-site projects. 

Solution – Practical, transparent and innovative 

TAUW convinced the authorities to adapt their regulatory process for this project. The authorities permitted the Phase I and Phase 2 assessments to be conducted on a plot-by-plot basis, instead of requiring the completion of Phase I for the entire site. The regulations were supplemented with a clause legally requiring plot owners to conduct a phase 1 analysis when their plot becomes available for the project.  

GIS viewer 
A second solution that we provided was the interactive GIS viewer, which visualises all the environmental information and makes it publicly accessible. Although this mostly normal practice in the Netherlands, it was an innovation for Spain.