Index Anillo Verde de Vitoria-Gasteiz

The idea of creating the Green Belt emerged at the beginning of the 1990s with the aim of providing an overall solution to the problems of the peripheral areas of Vitoria-Gasteiz and to their general state of degradation.

At the beginning of the project, there were areas of high ecological value situated around the edge of the city, such as the forests of Armentia and Zabalgana (although affected by problems of erosion, fires, etc., these areas had managed to survive the urban and industrial expansion of the city), but also the gravel pits, landfills and other degraded spaces that threatened the survival of the remaining natural spaces. This zone offered precarious conditions for sitting or going for walks and had become a physical and social barrier between the urban environment and the adjacent rural milieu.

In order to resolve the existing problems and to restructure and/or take advantage, as appropriate, of these clearly residual and undervalued periurban spaces, in the early nineties, the Town Hall of Vitoria-Gasteiz decided to undertake a large-scale project which would embrace all the outlying districts of the city and provide a solution both for the more developed areas and natural enclaves.

The idea to create a network of green, periurban spaces also found support and its raison d’être within the framework of the 1986 General Urban Development Plan, as this proposed to extend the system of green urban areas to include spaces on the edge of the city.

Objectives and strategies

• Promote the conservation of natural periurban spaces and the ecological restoration of other recoverable spaces, creating a natural continuum around the city
• Integrate the city’s periurban parks into the urban layout and to connect these at the same time with the natural environment, thereby improving the physical and ecological accessibility between the urban green area´s and natural spaces of the municipality
• Develop periurban spaces to promote their use by the public, in order to go some way towards satisfying the demands of the inhabitants of the city for open-air leisure areas and to absorb, at the same time, the pressure on other, more fragile natural spaces
• Take advantage of the recovery and development of these new spaces in order to encourage environmental awareness and education with the ultimate aim of involving the inhabitants of the city in their conservation

Last update: 10/02/2007