The Alicante City Council has signed off on the draft of its Structural General Plan (PGE), a new framework that clears the way for more than 45,000 residential units across the municipality. Approved by the city government’s extraordinary board on 5 August, the document now heads to a strategic environmental assessment run by the Generalitat Valenciana. This is the first major overhaul of the urban planning scheme in almost four decades.
Scale of the upcoming residential build‑out
The draft earmarks three distinct streams of construction. About 22,300 units are slated for five fresh development sectors, forming the bulk of the expansion. A second tranche of roughly 14,300 units will emerge from regeneration projects that revamp existing neighbourhoods rather than push the urban edge outward. An additional 5,000 units are planned for consolidated built‑up areas, while 1,300 affordable rentals are set aside on land linked to public facilities.
Numbers alone illustrate the ambition: 45,000 new dwellings, 349 hectares of added green space, and over 170,000 sqm reserved for sports venues. The draft also carves out at least 100,000 sqm for a possible third public hospital. These figures are part of a broader push to match projected population growth while keeping the city’s footprint in check.
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Infrastructure, green belts and transport links
Beyond homes, the framework calls for a 19‑kilometre Green Belt and a 21‑kilometre Coastal Route that will thread through the expanded urban fabric. Two intermodal hubs, a dozen park‑and‑ride sites and an enlarged tram network aim to ease commuting. Green space gains total 349 hectares, lifting the planned total to 488 hectares, including the 152.39‑hectare Rabasa Peri‑urban Lagoons Park and the 123.18‑hectare Huerta de Alicante Agricultural Park.
The document links new construction to public amenities. It sets aside land for a third hospital, expands facilities for the University of Alicante and Miguel Hernández University, and earmarks more than 170,000 sqm for sports complexes. Such allocations suggest a coordinated approach to growth, though the specifics will be refined during the environmental review.
Comparing this effort with the previous overhaul from the early 1980s, the current draft appears more integrated, tying housing supply directly to public services and green infrastructure. While the older scheme focused mainly on expanding the built environment, today’s version tries to balance density with livability, echoing trends seen in other Mediterranean cities that have modernized their planning tools after decades of stagnation.
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Critics note that the draft must still clear the regional assessment and subsequent planning steps before any ground can be broken. The timeline for those approvals remains uncertain, and market observers will watch how quickly the land pipeline translates into actual construction activity.
For now, the municipality has a clear roadmap that combines new builds with the renewal of existing districts. The next phase will test whether the ambitious numbers survive the scrutiny of environmental regulators and the practicalities of financing large‑scale public works.
