The council approved moving forward with the draft Valencia Community Neighborhood Law, a step that situates the measure within the broader framework of the Next Generation Recovery Fund. This fund, amounting to 750,000 million euros, was authorized to mitigate the socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic and will guide the policy’s implementation.
Currently, Valencia lacks a comprehensive legal regime that coordinates rehabilitation, renewal, and urban revitalization while embracing a holistic view of life in neighborhoods beyond the physical streets and buildings.
Hence, the preliminary Neighborhood Law draft establishes a regulatory framework that guarantees the right of every resident to live in a safe, sustainable, inclusive, and universally accessible environment. The law aims to promote personal growth, social cohesion, gender equality, and a shared cultural identity.
targets
Specifically, the Valencia regulations emphasize three main goals. First, support for single‑parent households, seniors, unemployed youth, and immigrant communities, among others.
Second, it seeks to address urban deficiencies that affect housing quality, access to services, and the dynamics of housing segregation and social inequality. These issues tend to hit certain neighborhoods hardest.
Third, the law aims to strengthen civic life and neighborhood associations, empowering residents to participate in projects that improve facilities and living conditions for all.
Rehabilitation
The Consell recognizes urban deprivation as a shared challenge and positions urban rehabilitation, renewal, and revitalization as top priorities for Valencian municipalities in the 21st century.
Attention is drawn to areas facing abandonment, obsolescence, or degradation of the built environment, especially where unemployment, low incomes, and social vulnerabilities such as gender, ethnicity, age, or disability contribute to risk.
Valencia also contains suburban zones with deep social tensions arising from fast growth, uneven planning, and intra‑city disparities. These areas experience overcrowding, signs of segregation, marginalization, and developmental dysfunctions.
The COVID-19 health crisis further exposed city weaknesses and underscored the need for more effective urban management.
Within these contexts, Valencia’s urban fabric features a network of mid‑sized cities centered around valuable historic cores that anchor collective identity. Since the 1950s, dense residential areas grew around these cores, often with varying construction quality.
There was a period when large housing estates were promoted alongside state‑led conservation and development projects. This coexistence extended to peripheral settlements, frequently self‑built by residents, which have undergone substantial renovation since 1979.
Public intervention, therefore, cannot rely solely on remedial or urbanizing actions. A comprehensive approach is required—integrating social, economic, and environmental strategies with real governance that prioritizes the needs of settled populations.