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Spain is a country with a large high-speed rail network (HSR or AVE by its initials in Spanish). Most of this railway network was built between 2000 and 2007. Network deployment involves addressing many issues, particularly station localization. The traditional railway network in Spain has a different track gauge to that in the rest of Europe so historical stations do not always serve the high-speed network. In 2000, the first proposal for the railway network of Valencia was published. The authors research team realized two studies on the metropolitan railway network and better station localization in 2002 and 2006. In particular, these studies proposed an intermodal station in an airport to integrate travel flights and travel high-speed train. Between 2008 and 2010, a new provisional high-speed railway station in Valencia was built: Joaquin Sorolla Station. This paper analyses the initial proposal, the actual situation and trends after 2006 on airport–railway station relations in other cities, such as Madrid or Barcelona.

L Horta de Valencia is a peri-urban agricultural space with recognized values as a heritage: historic, cultural, agricultural, economic, landscape and natural resource. Across Europe, there are only six similar landscapes according DOBRIS report of European Environment Agency (1998). Many studies and authors show their values. This historical zone is irrigated from Medieval Age by seven channels of Túria s river, and irrigation water is managed by specific organization of seven Irrigation Community, one for each channel, with a historical Court of Waters. UNESCO named the Court of Waters as a World Heritage. The surface of historical irrigation zones was very extensive with about 23.000 has. Today there are about 12.000 ha. There have been several attempts to plan and protect this area and landscape, but so far, none has succeeded. Last attempt was in about 2006 by Territorial Action Plan to Protect Horta of Valencia, finalized in 2010 but not approved. Meanwhile, urbanization of agricultural areas have continued. In fact, this situation occurs a result of management problems. Protection of anthropic spaces requires maintenance of existing economic activities, particularly agricultural activities but not only. Stakeholders expect more incomes by urbanization processes. Therefore, the main problem to execute with success any plan is the management agricultural space to maintain economic activities associates to agricultural landscape. This paper analyze the behavior of stakeholders and structural causes that explain failure of Horta planning and propose management systems to generate objective conditions in order to maintain this exceptional landscape

The extraordinary urban development that has occurred in Spain in the period of 1997–2007 allows us to analyze directly the generated environmental problems. In this period, between 300,000 and 900,000 houses were built in Spain each year and many of them were built on the Mediterranean coast. In many areas of new urban development, houses are unsold because there is no market and many areas are completely urbanized but not built on. So this reality is a great laboratory where we can directly check the environmental consequences of unjustified urban developments. There is legislation for the prevention of the environmental impacts of urbanization in Spain. This legislation has failed to avoid unnecessary urban development although it has produced clear environmental impacts. The F. Eiximenis research group analyzed select cases on the Valencian coast (between Sagunto and Cullera) for assessing the environmental effects of these urban developments, particularly concerning the transformation of the soil’s environmental value, the consumption of resources and the emissions. The land transformation has been analysed by CORINE data, digital images and direct observation. This paper explains the situation produced and the main findings of the research.

The European Union (EU) promoted some important changes with the Directives to implement the Aarhus Convention and the Strategic Environmental Assessment. Spain developed the Directives with some Acts in 2006 and incorporated the sustainable development principle in land regulation, land planning, land activity, land transformation and land use with Acts in 2007. However, in Spain, for environmental matters, the central laws regulate only a general framework and rules for central plans and programmes. The autonomous communities must approve any complementary laws with a detailed application, especially in urban planning matters. In this moment the Autonomous Community of Valencia (ACV) does not have any special regulation for strategic environmental assessment of urban planning, but, at the same time, the ACV publishes some acts for urban planning and approves guidelines concerning sustainability, citizens’ quality of life and land planning. It is obliged to apply these guidelines to urban planning. The new proceedings and documents that these new Laws require one to elaborate the Urban Plan are not foreseen in ACV legislation. All these matters generate a situation of juridical insecurity. Anyway the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) have a special methodological relation. Paradoxically, urban plans in the ACV have been subject to EIA since 1999. There is therefore, a great experience on this matter with a type of environmental

The last real estate cycle in Spain is a paradigmatic example of non sustainable development. The extraordinary urban development in the 1997-2007 period produced an extraordinary economic growth based on land speculation and housing. The end of the cycle generates a very severe economic crisis, one that is the most serious economic crisis in a long time. This process has economic, social and environmental repercussions; from the economic point of view Spain has a temporally increased its GDP. The real estate activity has generated houses, and land able to be developed, but without use and without a market. From the social point of view, the Spanish people have changed their system of moral value. It takes as an ideal rapid enrichment without effort and without producing useful goods and services, and from the environmental point of view, on building over an extensive area without use. It is an irreversible process of rural land transformation. All land conversion is carried out by urban planning; the landscape changes and “urban sprawl” increases.

The Valencian Community is located in the Spanish Mediterranean area. At present the whole Spanish Mediterranean is living through a process greatly accelerated by urban development. This process is generated, fundamentally, by the demand for housing by the population of Europe’s central and northern areas in a situation of global economy. These processes suppose an irreversible transformation of the territory which is not always justified. The dysfunctions produced in these processes forced the regional Valencian government to reform, in depth, all the legislation in matters dictating new laws: Soil for non urbanize Law of 2004, Law of regional planning and protection of the landscape of 2004 and Urban development Valencian Law of 2005. This legislative wide and extensive set introduces in to urban development planning the whole set of procedures orientated to the environmental sustainability. The regulation establishes novel measurements as, amongst others, the indicators of sustainability, the quotas of sustainability to pay when the sustainability limits are exceeded, the Fund of Territorial Equity, the programs and projects for the sustainability and the quality of life, the transfer to the administration of an equal surface magnitude of natural reserve as that of any new urbanization, and the obligation of landscape studies. In spite of all this it continues without approaching an administrative reform that generates a system of management that really guarantees the protection of the natural resources in the short and long term. The present text analyzes the innovative elements that interfere for the sustainability of the urban development planning and it also indicates the still not solved aspects.