Metropolitan Reticular Matrix Planning

Metropolitan Reticular Matrix Planning (also known as 'CT' planning - see below) is an approach to managing the growth of metropolises. It is a type of regional planning, as it deals with issues beyond strict city limits. It was first applied to the Madrid Metropolitan Plan in 1996 and has since been applied to a number of other metropolises.

The methodology has two principal components: linearity and scale.

Metropolitan Reticular Matrix Planning detected that, counter to Walter Christaller’s Central Place Theory, metropolises and urban systems do not exist in ‘featureless plains’. This notion is the precondition to the application of Christaller's theory. To the contrary, Metropolitan Reticular Matrix Planning analyzes that most metropolises develop in a particular geographical site, a strategic location for economic and social relations. A strategic location is one that has a comparative advantage mostly related to a point of transition between two geographical systems: the comparative advantage at the border between two ecosystems.

Strategic locations are places like seaports, river crossings, mountain passages or foothills. Often each ecosystem requires a different mode of transportation. The geographical comparative advantage that requires a logistic intermodal node has been the economic and social base on which metropolises grow.

Geographical features are most commonly linear: a coast, river, ridge, etc. Metropolises are thus naturally determined by a linear direction inconsistent with the circular or hexagonal approach taken by Christaller’s theories and most common historical urban planning.

The proper response to linearity is the development of a gradient approach: parallel lines to the main linear feature produce a transversal force gradient. The reticula vertebrates the system in a natural way and responds to the location needs better than the hexagonal or orbital systems.

As an aggregation of urban units, the metropolis has a different scale. The integration of the urban and metropolitan scales is the focus of most metropolitan planning conflicts. A scale dialogue has to be articulated. It builds beyond the urban (1:5,000) and metropolitan (1:50,000) scales upwards to the national (1:500,000) and continental (1:5,000,000), as well as downwards to the urban design (1:500) and architecture (1:50) scales.

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