**1. Introduction**

The challenges of urbanization and demographic change are increasingly recognized as components of resilient and sustainable development [1], especially in a context where the world's population is expected to reach 10 billion people by the year 2050, with 68% located in urban areas [2]. The society and the world of the 21st century, which are eminently urban, are "incorporating one of the deepest and most accelerated transformations in the history of humanity" [3]. There is no doubt that we are facing a major epochal change [4].

It is urgent to change the current models of urban development from the perspective of sustainable development, climate change, and resilience to natural and technological

**Citation:** Tomatis, F.;

Lozano-Castellanos, L.F.; García-Navarrete, O.L.; Correa-Guimaraes, A.; Wilhelm, M.S.; Boukharta, O.F.; Murcia Velasco, D.A.; Méndez-Vanegas, J.E. Evaluation of Urban Sustainability in Cities of The French Way of Saint James (Camino de Santiago Francés) in Castilla y León according to The Spanish Urban Agenda. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 9164. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/su14159164

Academic Editors: Lucia Della Spina, Maria Rosa Valluzzi, Antonia Russo, Paola Pellegrini and Angela Viglianisi

Received: 18 June 2022 Accepted: 22 July 2022 Published: 26 July 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

disasters, and improve the quality of life, social integration, and equity [5–7]. However, to know what we need to change, we need to know where we are and where we are going.

Today, around 75% of the European population lives in urban areas. Estimates predict that the European urban population will increase to 80% by 2050 [8]. For this, it is vital to ensure a sustainable urban environment, knowing that cities are the engines of Europe's economy and are increasingly recognized as key players in the transition to a low-carbon economy [8]. The EU has a key role in promoting sustainable urban development [8] and considers that urban environmental sustainability encourages the revitalization and transition of urban areas and cities to improve the quality of life, promote innovation, and reduce environmental impacts while it maximizes economic and social co-benefits. The European Environment Agency considers urban sustainability from an environmental perspective achieved by focusing on environmental issues in urban areas such as air and water pollution, green spaces providing space for people and nature, biodiversity loss, resource efficiency, and mitigation measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and manage the impacts of climate change (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Conceptual framework for urban environmental sustainability. Source: European Environment Agency, 2021 [8].

In Spain, according to the Spanish Urban Agenda of 2019 [9], an important document in this article, the population percentages mentioned recently have already been reached. Spain is among the countries with the highest percentage of urban population in the

European Union (EU): of the 46,528,024 people that exist in the Spanish territory, 80% are concentrated in urban areas, which account for only 20% of the territory [9]. Spanish cities constitute, in many aspects, a reference in the European context due to their traditional compact city model, and a long tradition of urban planning and policy that has allowed rigorous action to be taken in the regeneration of centers and interior reform [10].

In this context, the search for sustainable development at the urban level and how cities, with their diverse conditions, characteristics, and available resources (sometimes limited), can move towards their own sustainability are of interest.

At the international level, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have emerged as a universal call to improve lives around the world. In 2015, all member states of the United Nations (UN) approved 17 SDGs, consisting of 169 targets and many indicators [11], as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Since its launch, progress has been made on many SDGs. Nevertheless, the overall action to achieve all the goals is still not moving at the right speed and scale [12]. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has unleashed an unprecedented social, environmental, and economic crisis, progress towards the SDGs was uneven and not on track to meet them by 2030.

Spain, similar to most European governments, is committed to the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda. In fact, the National Government of Spain has made an official document called the "Spanish Urban Agenda" (2019) that serves as a reference framework for urban areas with a focus on sustainable development and the 2030 Agenda. The Spanish Urban Agenda (SUA) stands out as a roadmap that can show the way to make Spanish towns and cities friendly, welcoming, healthy, and conscientious areas of coexistence by 2030. Although the SUA is focused on SDG 11 "*Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable*", it is also fully aligned, directly and indirectly, with the other SDGs.

The SUA is linked to the European Urban Agenda, which appears as an important reference due to its innovative methodology based on the principles of multilevel governance [10]. As a key objective, the adaptation of the economic programs of the European Union to the real challenges of the cities is useful in defining future actions that propose that the Spanish Urban Agenda adopts the necessary changes needed by the planning and management of urban policies [10]. The promotion by the European and Spanish institutions of a sustainable city model constitutes an opportunity to implement local Urban Agendas as documents that are required to structure an integrated vision of local urban policies from which different urban plans, mobility, energy, housing, environments, and economy can be developed [10].

Furthermore, the SUA is a very useful official tool for analyzing Spanish cities in terms of sustainability, as it has a system of indicators and a series of guidelines that allow diagnosis, monitoring, and revision of its own contents. On the one hand, the SUA presents purely descriptive data that is supplied by the General State Administration and, on the other hand, the SUA presents evaluation and monitoring data. This is important because urban areas are considered to be a reflection of the victories or defeats in the battle for sustainability [9] and its success will depend largely on the ability to reorient current urbanization processes from public management and policies [7]. This sentence outlines a challenge that can be faced with the economic tools and knowledge but whose success will ultimately depend on the collective political [7]. Considering the SUA as an excellent opportunity to incorporate sustainable development in Spanish cities, this article uses its data to analyze the host cities of The French Way of Saint James (Camino de Santiago Francés in the Spanish language) in the Autonomous Community of Castilla y León (according to the area affected by the declaration of the historic set of The French Way of Saint James in Castilla y León) [13]. From this perspective, the enhancement of cultural heritage can play a decisive role, not only in terms of increasing the life cycle of the heritage but also as an urban strategy capable of generating new economic, cultural, and social values, supporting the innovative dynamics of local development [14].

The SUA presents a territorial diagnosis and synthesis and descriptive indicators for cities with 5000 people or more (considering the urban population of 2019). Therefore, the cities contemplated in this analysis are Astorga, Cacabelos, León, Ponferrada, and Valverde de la Virgen (from the Province of León) and the city of Burgos (from the Province of Burgos). It should be clarified that Cababelos, in 2019, had a population of more than 5000 people; however, in the last 2 years, its population has been less than 5000. The Province of Palencia does not have cities with more than 5000 people through which The French Way of Saint James passes, so it is exempt from this evaluation (Table 1).

**Table 1.** Cities with more than 5000 people in 2019 that are hosts of The French Way of Saint James in the Autonomous Community of Castilla y León (Spain).


With the tools provided by the SUA, it is possible to territorialize and localize the commitments and challenges that are promoted at the international level in terms of sustainable urban development, within the framework of the SDGs, to local areas. From the visibility of the diagnoses and results obtained, the analyzed cities are given a preponderant position as the main promoters of their own sustainable development individually or together (taking advantage of the existing link with The French Way of Saint James), starting from the identification of aspects that are in line (or not) with the contribution of urban sustainability, SDGs, and the Specific Objectives of the SUA.

Through the data provided by the SUA in the context of connection with the SDGs, the diagnosis and analysis of the cities allows the promotion of bottom-up actions. In addition, having a reflection of the status of cities in terms of urban sustainability is useful to coherently promote various development strategies and/or action plans that manage to contribute to greater current and future socio-environmental well-being.
