Cutting-edge eco-town hailed as beacon of hope

SARRIGUREN - Of the brave new towns that mushroomed across Spain during its 12-year building boom, many now languish barely occupied or half-finished after last year's crash.

But a new town in northeastern Spain gleams as a handsome, user-friendly blueprint for urban sustainability.

Sarriguren, conceived and built from scratch as an eco-town, has been hailed as a beacon of hope for a sector in crisis. "Spain is wildly overdeveloped with unsustainable construction. We must reinvent the sector with good practices for cities of the future," says Alfonso Vergara, the town's designer.

In 1998 Sarriguren was a hamlet of only 14 people, surrounded by cornfields on a gentle hillside just outside Pamplona. Municipal and regional authorities earmarked the site as Spain's first eco-town and a national test-bed for ecological living.

A decade on and the 5700 homes have been allocated. Sarriguren's 9000 residents are mostly young couples, between 25 and 35, chosen according to criteria laid down nationally for subsidised housing: registered in the area, no home of their own, young children, modest income. Prices are reasonable: from €140,000 ($300,000) to €210,000.

Sarriguren's low-rise blocks are set back from a long park and a large ornamental lake fed by a stream. The lake irrigates the town's green spaces where thousands of trees, bushes, flowers and shrubs flourish. All homes are thermally insulated, bio-air conditioned via underground tubes that keep the temperature constant, and there are solar panels everywhere.

Yet few Sarriguren residents seem aware of the cutting-edge significance of the designer homes, which save 60 per cent of their energy.

"If it weren't for the information they give us, you wouldn't realise that this was an eco-town," says one. "It just seems very pleasant and new and green."

- INDEPENDENT