DRAFTING OF THE MULTI-MUNICIPAL POU IN GARRIGUES ALTES

The municipalities included in the Urban Development Master Plan for the Upper Garrigues (hereinafter POUP-GA) are Bellaguarda, Bovera, la Granadella, Granyena de les Garrigues, Juncosa, el Soleràs, els Torms, and el Cogul. Except for el Cogul, the rest of the municipalities form the urban subsystem of the Upper Garrigues, according to the Partial Territorial Plan of Ponent (2007).

Although el Cogul belongs to the urban subsystem of les Borges Blanques, it shares many geographical, economic, and demographic characteristics with the towns in the Upper Garrigues subsystem and has therefore been included in the Plan. This group of rural settlements has, overall, experienced a more severe and sustained population decline than the average across Catalonia.

The POUP-GA is conceived as a tool to help reverse the depopulation trend affecting the villages of the Upper Garrigues, tackling key causes such as limited access to rental or purchase housing for forming new households, heavy reliance on private vehicles and poor mobility, declining landscape quality, and uncertainty regarding the continuity of traditional agricultural activity.

This situation has prompted the need to revise the various general planning instruments currently in force across the Upper Garrigues area in order to adopt new criteria regarding infrastructure, open spaces, settlements, public facilities and services, and the landscape.

The objectives driving this proposal are as follows:

• Infrastructure: Plan east-west and north-south road infrastructure to improve connectivity between municipalities and with regional hubs such as Lleida and les Borges Blanques.
• Open spaces: Unify the planning of non-developable land. Define high-value agricultural areas, ecological protection zones, valley bottoms, and criteria for zones unsuitable for high visual impact activities.
• Settlements: Promote residential development through rehabilitation or completion of existing urban fabrics and ensure balanced growth tailored to each municipality’s needs.
• Facilities: Locate public facilities in accessible areas to ensure an evenly distributed network across the territory.
• Landscape: Preserve the traditional cultivation of olive and almond trees, as well as the supporting dry-stone architecture. Efforts will also focus on enhancing the visual quality of urban edges and facades.

The need for the POUP-GA arises, in general, from the requirements of urban planning legislation, and in particular, from the internal dynamics of the municipalities involved, which have led to the drafting of a unified master plan to guide urban development in alignment with the territory's specific needs.