El fenómeno de la expansión urbana y las tendencias de ocupación del suelo periurbano. El caso de margen norte en la cabecera municipal de Piedecuesta (Santander)

Abstract

The discussion about the peri-urban territory starts from the need to accept its multifaceted connotations because it is a border territory between the urbanized area and the unbuilt territory, whether free, agricultural, uncultivated or forested. In other words, a strip of variable thickness that surrounds the urban area and within which a conglomerate of full and empty spaces, built and unbuilt, occurs; an area where the organization and uses of the land destined for different purposes still presents many ambiguities and multiple directions in the processes of territorial ordering that lead to the loss of the implicit qualities of a territory that amalgamates elements typical of the urban area and the rural area. In this order of ideas, the research concentrates on a specific situation: the safeguarding and sustainable development of the peri-urban areas of the urban area of Piedecuesta (Santander) without forgetting their integration with the existing urban fabric, concentrating specifically on its northern margin as the main case study. The process starts from an approximate approach to the peri-urban territory of the city that goes from the general to the particular in order to obtain elements of judgment that support the consequent analysis of the current reality of the northern margin. It then proceeds to a confrontation with the current regulations governing the soil, which will support the diagnosis that in turn will direct a series of guidelines structured within the framework of a sustainable ordering of the territory of the North border that observes and incorporates in its actions its intrinsic values, environmental particularities and potentialities present there.