Vallmora Park

Recovery of old agricultural terraces to provide the city with a park with a pedagogical vocation to promote biodiversity and citizen participation through the popular planting of trees.

Introduction

The Vallmora Park is located on former abandoned fields between the neighbourhoods of Masnou Alt and Vallmora. With the abandonment of the fields, the old agricultural terraces were used as an uncontrolled landfill in the municipality of Masnou, Barcelona. The development proposal recovers the old agricultural terraces by generating different meeting spaces such as a large civic square, a space for large events, a play area for all ages and the revegetation of the forest bordering the Maresme motorway.

A new connecting landscape

The development of the General Metropolitan Plan recognises an old existing layout in order to implement a street with a vehicular route that connects the neighbourhoods adjacent to the green area. The proposal for the development of Vallmora Park recovers the planned layout with pedestrian paths through east-west connections that cross the park and flat routes that guarantee social connectivity and accessibility for users. In the central area the main path becomes a large equipped promenade generating a large civic square called the heart of the park with a grandstand for events.

Development strategies

The existing topography of the former crop fields is recovered to create terraces equipped with a central meeting area for residents and new play and activity areas for all ages. The project foresees connections between the city and the new park along its perimeter at different points, adapting to the topography of the different urban fabrics around it.

The heart of the park is materialised through a pedestrian and bicycle path that connects the upper levels of the adjacent neighbourhoods, a square with permeable sauló paving, tree plantations to provide shade for users and an amphitheatre with seating for events. The amphitheatre is located on the terrace at the upper level, making it a new vantage point overlooking the city and the sea.

The lower terraces have been equipped with a variety of play elements for different ages and diversities, designed to encourage exercise in a re-naturalised environment. Thanks to which Vallmora Park has become a metropolitan centre where children and young people from all over the region come to play.

Recovery of the vegetation

During the period of abandonment of cultivation in the Vallmora area, the vegetation on the site was lost. The project recovers the arboreal vegetation that was on the site, generating a shaded space that becomes a bioclimatic refuge through the planting of autochthonous vegetation adapted to the climatic conditions of the area and with low water requirements. The upper part of the park has been replanted with Mediterranean forest vegetation through popular plantations carried out by different groups in the municipality, such as municipal technical services, associations for the elderly and schools. The existing terraces at the lower levels of the park have been replanted with fruit trees grown in the area, which provide shade for the playgrounds and play areas. The terraced banks of the terraces have been replanted with shrub species with year-round flowering to ensure insect pollination.

Improved stormwater management within the park has been developed through lamination, retention and infiltration into the landscape for all ecological processes, especially for the insect ecosystem. Sustainable drainage systems (SUDs) have been used to promote infiltration into the ground and reduce water input into the sewage system.

The insect hotel

The incorporation of an insect hotel in the park provides a habitat for those animals, which, due to the anthropisation of the landscape, have difficulty in finding it. A strategy has been developed to provide them with food, water and sleeping quarters. The insect hotel is ecologically connected with large plant masses of indigenous species that ensure year-round flowering. Each plant species has been selected to attract a specific insect species. Sustainable water management through SUDs makes it possible to generate humid spaces for the insects. The insect hotel has become an artificial shelter and hibernation space for insects built with natural and local materials. A complex structure has been created, divided into different tiers for each type of insect and nesting.

Increasing the diversity of insects helps to develop more adapted plants and increase the biodiversity of our landscape, helping us to manage pollution in our cities.

Through pollination, insects enable the fruiting of species that feed us, such as fruits and vegetables, and help the seed production of many wild plants. In addition, insects attracted to the hotel eradicate pests that affect crops and gardens.

Finally, the hotel is used as an educational tool that allows citizens to observe the insect cycle up close, as well as collecting scientific data.