New Forms of Mobility: The Case of Madrid

The evolution of Madrid during the last decades has implied a densification of the central city and a notable growth of its peripheries. The densification of the capital municipality does not imply a significant increase in its number of inhabitants, but it does imply an increase in its activities, endowments and functions as a central place, be they commercial, service or command of highly relevant economic activities. This causes an accelerated trend towards an increase in traffic and mobility demand. On the other hand, the development of the peripheries, which end up accounting for a population greater than that of the city, introduces the need to provide new connection networks, more public transport vehicles and efficient road lines. Mobility becomes metropolitan, with intense periphery-centre flows, but also centre-periphery and between the different localities located outside the capital node. This complex panorama is analysed and interpreted in the chapter. At the same time, the text raises the necessary intermodality, complementarity of modes of transport and reduction of emissions that should lead to achieving a sustainability objective. Mobility has gone from being citizen to metropolitan, it is becoming enormously complex and intense, and, in this context, the objective of reducing the resulting environmental impacts becomes a fundamental commitment that the urban space as a whole must assume for the coming decades.