Water-sensitive strategies in the new urban parks in Valencia: the agricultural Mediterranean paradigm as a pattern for landscape management and design

Abstract

The paper shows how some water sensitive strategies that have traditionally been used in Mediterranean agriculture to manage rainwater reappear as basic elements in the design of the main urban parks built in recent years in the city of Valencia, as Cabecera Park, Hesperides Garden, Marxalenes Park and Central Park. The elements associated with the use of the water for agricultural purposes in the Mediterranean context, as canals, ditches, irrigation ponds and wells, as well as the terrain modelling with terraces to retain rainwater, are some of the archetypal elements that compose a distinctive anthropic landscape, and provide, in addition to tested solutions for an efficient water management, a set of morphological patterns to design these new parks.