Madrid’s growth shows no signs of slowing down. While 60% of Madrid’s current housing stock was built between 16960 and 1975, according to City Hall data, an estimated 300,000 more homes are expected to be added between 2025 and 2030, spread across 13 different developments throughout the Community of Madrid.
In the southeast, on a massive 19-million-square-meter site in Villa de Vallecas, Valdecarros is already taking shape: the largest urban development currently underway in Spain and one of the largest in Europe, with more than 51,000 homes planned and the first deliveries expected in 2029. If the deadlines are met, by the end of this decade the first residents will begin moving into a neighborhood designed to accommodate some 150,000 people, with 55% of the homes under some form of housing protection and 40% of the land converted into green spaces.
Valdecarros is part of the so-called Southeast Strategy, alongside other developments such as El Cañaveral, Los Berrocales, Los Ahijones, and Los Cerros, but it is in a league of its own in terms of size: its 19 million square meters are, in practice, equivalent to an additional district for Madrid. The plan calls for 51,656 homes, of which about 55% will be some form of public housing (VPO or similar programs), making it the largest supply of affordable housing planned in the capital for the next twenty years.
The neighborhood is organized into eight development phases that will be carried out in stages to adapt supply to the actual demand at any given time. More than 5 million square meters of land are publicly owned (by the City Council, the Community of Madrid, and the State), which will allow the authorities to directly promote the construction of more than 18,000 homes, many of them at protected prices.
First construction cranes and deliveries starting in 2029
While today Valdecarros remains, in the eyes of the average Madrilenian, “a vast wasteland,” underground and in the offices the project is already underway. The first three phases of development, comprising 13,371 homes, have their own timeline: infrastructure work has been underway since 2021, and the Compensation Board estimates that construction on the first housing developments will begin between 2026 and 2027.
With those timelines, and considering that constructing a residential building typically takes between 24 and 30 months,the first keys could begin to be handed over between late 2028 and 2029. We are talking about a “first Valdecarros” roughly equivalent in size to a neighborhood like Valdebebas, with about 13,000 homes and some 30,000 potential residents—barely one-fifth of what is planned for the entire development.
At the same time, the Community of Madrid has announced its intention to promote 9,000 public housing units within the area, 7,000 of which will be subsidized, as part of a plan to ensure that one in every three homes built in the capital by 2045 comes from Valdecarros.
Another hallmark of the project is its commitment to green spaces. Of the 19 million square meters, some 7 million are set aside for green areas, accounting for nearly 40% of the total area. The urban design ensures that no home is more than 200 meters from a park and calls for the planting of more than 110,000 trees as part of the future Metropolitan Forest.
Internal mobility is designed with pedestrians and cyclists in mind: the master planallocates more than 127 kilometers of bike lanes and pedestrian paths, so that a significant portion of daily trips (to school, the health center, the grocery store) can be made without a car. Added to this are tree-lined boulevards, plazas, and green corridors that will connect Valdecarros with the rest of the Vallecas Expansion and with the major environmental corridors of the southeast.
Services, employment, and neighborhood life
The intention of both the City Council and the developer itself is for Valdecarros not to be a bedroom community. According to the plan, the neighborhood will feature daycare centers, elementary schools, high schools, health centers, hospitals, sports facilities, office spaces, shopping centers, and local retail, as well as space for new light industrial activities. In total,462,000 square meters are set aside for commercial use, of which 175,000 will be in street-level retail spaces, pointing toward a model of vibrant streets with neighborhood shops and bars beyond the large shopping centers.
The scale of the investments also offers clues as to the economic impact: for urban development and the initial phases alone, private investment is estimated at over 1.8 billion euros, to which is added approximately 7.6 billion euros projected for housing and public infrastructure over the next twenty years. Thousands of direct and indirect jobs will be created in construction, services, and commerce, reinforcing the role of the southeast as a new growth hub for Madrid.
Connections to the rest of the city
Although the details of the transportation infrastructure will continue to be refined, some elements are already clear: Valdecarros will rely on the extensions of the M-45 and M-31, and will have direct connections to the A-3 and M-50, in addition to an internal network designed to distribute traffic without creating bottlenecks. The plan also calls for strengthening public transportation: new transit hubs, bus line extensions, integration with the commuter rail system, and possible Metro extensions depending on demand.
The new Valdecarros development will rely primarily on the existing Valdecarros station on Line 1 and on a future network still under study: the official plan refers to Line 1 as the backbone, to a new Metro line that the Regional Transport Consortium is analyzing, and to a possible internal light rail systemalong the Gran Vía del Sureste, but as of today, no construction contracts have been awarded and no dates have been set for specific new stations within the area.
Critics—especially neighborhood associations and groups in the southeast—point out exactly that: they fear that the first 10,000–13,000 homes will arrive before new high-capacity infrastructure is built ; they complain that everything relies on an already overburdened Line 1 and a vague promise of future expansions, and they are demanding firm commitments (budgets, projects, and timelines) so that Valdecarros does not repeat the pattern of other PAUs where the metro took years to keep pace with the neighborhood’s growth.