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Madrid in the Future -- Forward to Sponge City Sustainability?

The Ecotopia 2121 Project details the future of 100 cities across the globe as though they've somehow overcome all the grave environmental challenges our age and grown to become super-Green and super-ecofriendly. This month, we highlight the future of Madrid.

Like many capital cities, Madrid is an administrative hub, a business hub, an industrial hub, and a cultural hub of a whole nation. This profundity of ‘hubness’ attracts a great continuous flow of people and money into the city to the point that Madrid has become ‘overdeveloped’. And some also say it has become overpopulated, too, with a metropolitan area of seven million people all driving too many cars on too many highways and throwing away too much trash.

In the future, as Madrid works to prosper well into the late 21st century, it carries on to build great boulevards and highways, all made of concrete and asphalt, unable to absorb water. Thus storm water sweeps across roads in small floods, washing trash and pollution off into local lakes, streams and rivers.

The solution, which is manifest in Madrid 2121, is this: Madridistas look to put a curb on the use of concrete; demanding that one-half of the city’s surface remains uncovered. This process will help transform Madrid into a Sponge City

Madrid 2121 as a Sponge City

MADRID in the FUTURE


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