294 Gathering the pieces
tend to be heavily contaminated with incompletely treated
human wastewater, so identifying priority areas for separating
the two systems is animportant step.
Relocating heavy industry to efficient heavy-industry centersis particularly
valuable in urban regions where heavy industry is located along-
side a major water body or upwind of a population center.
Gradual transfer to a heavy-industry center with efficient power,
water, waste disposal, and transportation is an employment and
economic investment. It also enhances the water bodies and
downwind communities.
Atruck-transport centermainly applies to urban regions without one. Cen-
tralizing the loading and unloading of goods and agricultural
products by both local and long-distance trucks provides cas-
cading benefits to people as well as the environment, in the
city and across the region.
Large underpasses or overpasses for walkers and wildlifeare applicable to
regions where highways are significant disruptions to cross-
ing the urban-region ring by trail walkers and local residents,
as well as key wildlife species (Figure11.2). In view of ongo-
ing urbanization, wildlife movement connectivity tends to be
mainly important in the outer portion of an urban-region
ring.
Agreen-netsolution applies widely to regions where many nearby grow-
ing towns and small cities are threatening to coalesce. The green
net provides a multitude of people-and-nature benefits at differ-
ent scales from local community to region.Solutions limited in applicability to the distinctive Barcelona Region
None. All solutions provided in the land mosaic plan for the Barcelona
Region, while tailored to the specifics of the region, apply widely to urban
regions globally.
This summary, done more than two years after plan completion, was a sur-
prise. The widespread applicability of the Barcelona solutions seems to highlight
thecommonalities of urban regions. The plan addresses today’s big problems and
trends, and also outlines a land mosaic with flexibility to sustain the region in
thefuture. No detailed fine-scale design is involved, and no cookie-cutter homog-
enization is proposed. The solutions could be applied, each in a different way, to
athousand cities, and the cities would look as distinctive as ever. They might all
have cleaner rivers, valuable emeralds, more efficient, cleaner heavy industry,
and a glorious monumental park. Yet the culture and socioeconomics in each