Landscapes in the City

In early 2004, the city of Madrid witnessed the emergence of a violent wound alongside the small river that crosses it from north to south. A bare scar appeared near its center when the M-30 beltway that ran parallel to its riverbanks was rerouted underground. This large linear space freed of any construction emerged as an unprecedented and promising potential landscape.

In a similar fashion, a few other cities, such as Boston or Seoul, have replaced their major roadways with green corridors that marked a new understanding of the relation between urban settings, their inhabitants and nature. In Madrid, it is now possible to explore large, uninterrupted areas where the valuable unoccupied territory of the periphery merges with free space in the central city. The Manzanares river has thus become the main nexus, a door that links outside with inside. The abundant drawings, diagrams, detailed entries, and photographs in this book serve to narrate the process of conception and development of the Madrid Río Park, the most far-reaching urban operation carried out in this city in recent decades.