Madrid Rio is part of one of the biggest urban projects of Madrid of the last decade. This huge project consisted in creating a tunnel for the highly congested M-30 beltway. The space that was freed on the surface was redesigned as a green area, contributing to the quality of life in the city. It makes the river Manzanares, which was previously surrounded by the highway lanes, visible again.
Madrid Rio has been opened in the first half of 2011. In the Introduction Week of the Master, we studied this brand-new area as the “urban” part of our exploration of Madrid.
Ginés Garrido, the lead architect who designed the park, was our expert guide this time. He explained the main ideas behind the project to the students of the Master in Global Environmental Change. Madrid Rio connects the space previously occupied by the M-30 in two directions. First of all, it connects with the green spaces on both sides of the city, the mountains to the north, and the meseta to the south. Also, it connects the two sides of the river, which were previously fairly badly connected. Several bridges were added.
To explore this new urban space, we cycled from the far North, where the highway goes under the ground, to the southern tip of Madrid Rio, where we crossed the river and cycled back, using the lanes on the other side. We were lucky as this was one of the last sunny days of October…
This promotional video of the project gives you a taste of the massive transformation of this urban space.
