The proposal for the drafting of the Urban Master Plan (PDU) for the Campus of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is based on the recognition of its dual territorial condition: a university enclave of high environmental quality that has historically been isolated and structured through a fragmented functional logic. The campus, covering 230 hectares and hosting a community of over 50,000 people, is currently at a turning point shaped by the obsolescence of the existing planning framework, the metropolitan evolution of the B-30 corridor, and the emergence of new environmental, social, and economic challenges. In this context, the PDU is conceived as a strategic planning instrument to shift from a campus composed of specialized macro-buildings towards a complex urban fabric, territorially integrated and aligned with sustainability and academic excellence objectives.
The proposal is structured around the following urban planning strategies:
- Strengthening territorial and ecological continuities, by protecting and structuring natural value areas and ensuring their connection with the campus open space system and the wider metropolitan context.
- Reorganizing the campus under compactness criteria, prioritizing growth on underused land and avoiding dispersion over environmentally valuable areas.
- Creating a new campus-scale central space, the Central Promenade, as a framework for urban centrality, mixed uses, and collective life.
- Reorganizing mobility, prioritizing walking, cycling, and public transport, freeing the campus core from private vehicle traffic and rationalizing parking areas.
- Defining new territorial façades, particularly towards the B-30 corridor and Parc de l’Alba, as elements of identity and functional activation.
- Structuring an integrated system of open spaces, healthy, accessible, and resilient to climate change.
- Establishing a flexible and adaptive regulatory framework, capable of responding to the future transformations of the campus and its surroundings.
These strategies position the UAB Campus as a leading suprametropolitan university and research node, environmentally responsible and urbanistically coherent.
