Regeneration strategies for the design of sustainable urban environments: Pliego’s urban journey in Murcia, Spain

To analyze and discover the keys for the regeneration of the damaged urban fabric of a given area is one of the fundamental challenges faced by urban designers and planners. How can we know which are the necessary changes needed to achieve the recovery of a public space? The application of a series of environmental sustainability indicators, adapting their parameters to the characteristics of the place, is an effective tool to objectively define what is working and what isn’t in a defined urban environment, which allows designers to develop precise actions, in order to define public spaces that respond to the specific needs of citizens.The development of the Pliego Plan, in Murcia, Spain, allowed us to work with a set of urban sustainability indicators and strategies for urban regeneration in a real environment. This project gave us the opportunity to understand real problems in terms of management and involvement of the community, as well as the importance of a holistic approach to urban interventions, as fundamental aspects for the development of more sustainable cities.