This is a map of the district of Salamanca in Madrid. This district is laid out as a grid with a few major boulevards bisecting the blocks. Walking around this area is really pleasant. You've got all you need right at your footsteps bakeries, shops, restaurants and access to a world class public transport system. Here's the thing. A lot of Madrid is more or less like this. Salamanca has a lot of affluent residents, but the basic aspects of what makes it a nice place to live are not exclusive to this neighborhood, because Madrid as a whole is insanely well-designed, Let's go back to Salamanca. This area of the city was planned from the top down. If you look at it from above, you can quickly see a grid system and blocks. in the late 1800s, Madrid and other parts of Spain were beginning to industrialize. That meant that folks were moving from rural areas into the city center. City leaders in Madrid, Barcelona and other places knew that without a solid city plan in place, people would face problems and so would the city. Barcelona's grid system, which is as famous as the city itself, was built in part thanks to the Plan Cerda. Madrid's counterpart was the Plan Castro. The Plan Castro laid out a grid system in the areas immediately outside of the old city walls. This was the first planned expansion of the city. Throughout Europe and North America, these old stock neighborhoods are appreciated by many for their walkability, density, and access to transit. But it's what Madrid the next that makes it really special. Let's create an example. In North America before the 1950s, most cities looked like this. You had an urban core with high density and mixed use. Then you had inner suburbs with a combination of single family homes and small apartments. These inner suburbs were connected to the city center by trams, and unlike suburbs nowadays, were not tens of miles away from the city center. Anyways. Then post 1950s urban highways and many other factors started to change how cities were built. The urban core was torn up. Parking lots replaced density And the original suburbs instead of growing and evolving. Devolved. In the new suburbs, most housing stock was exclusively residential, exclusively dependent on cars, and then increasingly further away from the traditional economic center. Okay, but this video was about Madrid. How did it compare? Well, Madrid does have urban highways. In general, the metro area has a lot of highways, but a lot of these highways were not built on previously existing neighborhoods, mostly just built on empty land and farmland. And here's where it gets even more interesting. On the other side of these highways, there's density. Almost as much density as the city center. Postwar Madrid that not expanded to the countryside ruthlessly, like North American cities and even some European cities. Madrid instead slowly incremented outward through densely planned neighborhoods, even those in farther away areas. Look at this time lapse of a planned neighborhood in the eastern inner edges of the city. you look at Madrid from above, you'll see these type of elliptical, grid style neighborhood signs throughout the city and outer suburbs. These neighborhoods follow the same pattern. A grouping of multi-story apartment buildings with a central courtyard laid out in a grid system with wide streets. Many of the buildings having commercial elements on the ground level. So when Madrid expanded during the 40s, 50s and 60s, it laid the foundation through sensible planning for a metro area that would not be entirely dependent on cars and highways. Let's compare it to a US metro area with a similar population. This timelapse shows the suburbs north of Dallas expanding through low density, car dependent single family homes. Not in the 50s but less than two decades ago. eating up farmland, laying down asphalt and spurring pollution. Madrid has one of the best public transit systems in the world. The metro area has nearly 6.8 million people. They're served by 12 metro lines, ten suburban lines, three tram lines, and 200 bus lines. This extensive system, along with the density of both the core and the suburbs, means that 34% of trips in the entire metro area are made walking. 25% of all trips in the entire metro area are made through public transit, and the rest, roughly 39%, are made through driving. So 69% of all trips made in the entire metro region don't involve cars. There's a lot I didn't cover in this video. When I was researching the information, I came across some critiques of the urban planning of these types of neighborhoods. Some folks believe they missed the mark in terms of integrating residents to the rest of the city. I also didn't cover anything related to the Madrid River plan. Essentially, Madrid buried a highway and transformed its river into a giant park. Anyways, thanks for watching. As always, with any complex topic, there's a chance that some of the information presented here is not as accurate as possible. If you have any comments, please leave it down below and don't forget to like and subscribe!