{"id":3137,"date":"2025-10-10T12:32:53","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transitophile.com\/chango\/?p=3137"},"modified":"2025-10-12T10:30:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T08:30:20","slug":"madrid-high-rise-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transitophile.com\/chango\/madrid-high-rise-living\/","title":{"rendered":"Madrid High-rise Living"},"content":{"rendered":"

A guiri<\/a><\/em> I will always be, but today I am a guiri with a more typically Madrile\u00f1o home. I moved far north of the colorful, historic central city, no longer stroll daily among rollaboard-toting visitors on Gran V\u00eda, less often overhear tourists chatting in a farrago of foreign tongues at Puerta del Sol. I am surprised if I overhear English more than twice a month in my neighborhood, almost never see other guiris here, am occasionally eyeballed discreetly by locals.<\/p>\n

Worth a post, I think, especially for readers who share an interest in what we transit fetishists call \u201ctransit-oriented development<\/a>,\u201d or TOD. Fewer than 150,000 live in that historic central city. The Madrid that expanded to include today\u2019s 3.4 million<\/a> (and nearly seven million<\/a> in the greater comunidad) did so largely in newer, less picturesque, multistory housing that can deliver the bodies a brawny rail transit network needs to be practical. I\u2019ll quote my immortal prose, from a 2018 post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A Cercan\u00edas sightseeing ride through Madrid\u2019s afueras shows me kilometer after kilometer of high-rise residential development: some of it ritzy, some of it run-down, but much of it straight out of a Transit Oriented Development textbook.<\/em><\/p>\n

I now live among those kilometers, hoist this post online to offer first-hand testimony. What\u2019s it like?<\/p>\n

A LOT DEPENDS ON THE NEIGHBORHOOD<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This has to go first.<\/p>\n

Fortune has smiled on me. I have been lucky enough to settle in a nice area, am pleased by what I look at while strolling home from the metro station. (Although not during the April garbage strike<\/a>.) That colors my perspective. Further, I didn\u2019t take photos for this post in humbler barrios to give a more balanced view. This is a personal blog, not a news site. I dislike pointing even a smartphone lens at what strikes me as ugly (although I made an exception<\/a> in Shanghai), feel a bit as if I\u2019m mocking, leering. Fellow humans call these places home.<\/p>\n

\"High-rises<\/a>
High-rises near the Pinar de Chamart\u00edn metro station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can compensate for my negligence. Look up \u201cMadrid\u2019s poorest neighborhoods\u201d in a search engine, fire up Google Street View, mouse around. You\u2019ll find densely-built, transit-oriented, multistory, multifamily housing with barred lower windows and a lot that would delight me far less on those home-from-the-metro strolls (as well as high-rises overlooking the freeway<\/a>). Please keep that in mind as you read.<\/p>\n

(Although the neighborhood metro station itself will be nice. I\u2019ve never seen anything here like the disgraceful Grant Avenue station<\/a> in Brooklyn.)<\/p>\n

MADRID TOD CO-EXISTS WITH CARS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Just for you, a photo of the Plaza de Cuzco<\/a> glorieta in Chamart\u00edn. The mobility-minded visitor will at this glorieta find a 10 line metro station, dedicated north\/south bus lanes, dedicated bike lanes, bicimad<\/a> racks, a taxi stand, tree-shrouded pedestrian walkways … and on any weekday in la hora punta<\/em>, armies of automobiles.<\/p>\n

\"Glorieta<\/a>
Glorieta, Plaza de Cuzco<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Transit is not stigmatized in Madrid as in most of the U.S. Madrid drivers chatted up at intercambios almost always know the time they save or lose with one transit mode or another. I infer that most would take transit if they could. But if they can\u2019t, you\u2019ll see them waiting for light changes at intersections like this. The strict traffic restrictions<\/a> in historic Madrid Central are a special case.<\/p>\n

The personal car generally plays a bigger role in transit as one moves farther from the city center (and not just in Madrid<\/a>). Expect to see \u2018garaje incluido<\/em>\u2019 in virtually all Idealista<\/em> listings for Comunidad de Madrid towns like Colmenar Viejo<\/a> and Tres Cantos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

PROBLEMS WITH CO-EXISTENCE WITH CARS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t find stats to back me up, but am confident that double parking is much more common in Madrid than in San Francisco or Los Angeles. This might suggest that Madrile\u00f1os are more tolerant of the practice.<\/p>\n

Well, they aren\u2019t. At all. Like a telegraph operator transcribing Morse code, I have learned to identify the outraged, impotent horn blasts of a motorist imprisoned between curb and delivery truck, with the delivery driver nowhere in sight.<\/p>\n

MYSTERIOUS NEIGHBORS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

My high-rise is faced, flanked and surrounded by other high-rise, multistoried kin. I can gaze from my living room at the windows of dozens of neighbors. Many will always be invisible to me; a surprising percentage keep their persianas drawn 24\/7, may grouchily prefer the privacy of windowless caves to available views. Others never close persianas, seem content to live on stage. An easily-entertained busybody could while away hours at my windows after dark, snooping on neighbors as they wash dishes, prepare food, watch TV, hunker over evening meals.<\/p>\n

\"Calle<\/a>
Calle de Narc\u00eds Monturiol<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I see some faces regularly, particularly those of neighbors who are fastidious about cleaning windows. We avoid direct eye contact.<\/p>\n

Madrid\u2019s high-rises must offer droll tales of exhibitionists (perhaps exhibitionists who are bald, elderly, pot-bellied, inappropriately narcissistic) and fist-shaking crackpots, but I can offer no links.<\/p>\n

Some of the high-rises originally included space in each unit for a narrow, rectangular outdoor balcony, perhaps on the assumption that residents would want to while away discretionary hours in open air and sunshine. A poor assumption, I think, as so many propietarios have walled their terraces in. The few who regularly avail themselves of their terraces may lounge, read and sunbathe in full view of their neighbors. Smokers also use terraces to feed nicotine addictions.<\/p>\n

PERSIANAS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Wordreference defines \u2018persianas<\/a>\u2019<\/em> merely as window blinds, or shutters, which I regularly raised and lowered inside residences in the U.S. But the persianas now familiar to me in Madrid are exterior<\/span> blinds, often metal, which I never saw stateside. They\u2019re all over the place here. I have them. Virtually everyone does.<\/p>\n

UNDER-THE-COUNTER KITCHEN WASHER AND WASHER\/DRYER<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

No photo in this post is likelier to inspire envy in a U.S. apartment dweller than that of this work-a-day washer\/dryer. It\u2019s not the what, it\u2019s the where. The washer\/dryer is in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

\"Under-kitchen-counter<\/a>
Under-kitchen-counter washer\/dryer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

American apartments do not usually include washers<\/a>. Residents expect to shlep dirty clothes to basement laundry rooms<\/a> or commercial laundromats. Said shleps range from merely tedious to gruesome. No clean shirts for tomorrow\u2019s job interview, you\u2019ve already carted your half-as-heavy-as-a-corpse laundry sack to the basement three times today, and haven\u2019t yet encountered a free machine. Or, Sandra Slacker gives you the evil eye for hauling her soggy clothes out of the drum and depositing them on the laundry room table, even though she left her wet pretties in the washer for three hours. Or, the building kleptomaniac STEALS YOUR CLOTHES. It happens.<\/p>\n

But it likely won\u2019t happen in Europe, as in-the-kitchen washers are common here. The drying cycle of such machines can take hours, but I have adopted the Spanish custom of draping clothes to dry on an interior tendedero<\/em><\/a>. Some buildings include rooftop clothes lines.<\/p>\n

EL CONTADOR<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

My unit includes discreetly-tucked-away meters for gas and water. A utility-company employee knocks on the door every couple of months for a reading.<\/p>\n

\"Contador<\/a>
Gas meter | photo by ppmu\u00f1oz, Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you don\u2019t trust a stranger to tread daintily over your hand-knotted antique Persian rugs, you can open an online account with the utilities in question, submit readings online every two months, and explain your diligence to the door-knocking employee. He\u2019ll be happy, and your rug will be, too, or at least as happy as a carpet is likely to feel about anything.<\/p>\n

VENDORS WITH LOUDSPEAKERS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Every week or so, a vendor motors as slowly as he dares through the streets of my neighborhood, blaring a recorded sales pitch from a roof-mounted loudspeaker. Nothing similar beset me when I lived in central Madrid.<\/p>\n

I am amazed that this is tolerated. I assume that the vendor is the only beneficiary, that thousands of innocent Spaniards do not thrill to the sudden din of a canned sales pitch while scrubbing the sink, dunking breakfast churros or doing whatever else they do in private at home. Most of us already have enough problems.<\/p>\n

MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In some parts of town. The Madrile\u00f1o in Nueva Espa\u00f1a or Tetu\u00e1n is likely to find markets, banks, restaurants and cafes within a couple of blocks of home. Other areas include fewer shops, strike me as almost pure bedroom communities.<\/p>\n

\"Calle<\/a>
Calle de Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, near the Cuzco metro station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

THE ALL-SEEING PORTERO<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The portero works for a building\u2019s property owners, but also may know much more about property owners\u2019 habits and personal lives than even the nosiest neighbor in the American \u2018burbs. It can\u2019t be helped; the portero accepts deliveries, may take messages, watches residents\u2019 ingress and egress from a desk by the entrance. Had the famously philandering<\/a> past king Juan Carlos\u00b9 lived in a Madrid high-rise, he might have struggled to sneak his serial paramours through the lobby. The portero might have snitched him off to the queen. The Zarzuela Palace<\/a> was probably safer.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00b9I just read Paul Preston\u2019s biography of Juan Carlos, so shall conclude by working in an anecdote about the former king that has UTTERLY NOTHING TO DO<\/strong> with the rest of this post, as it\u2019s worth telling and I won\u2019t have occasion to mention it elsewhere.<\/p>\n

His transgressions notwithstanding, Juan Carlos deserves enormous credit for steering Spain from dictatorship to democracy, and frequently endured small humiliations while doing so. When he flew on Iberia Airlines, for instance, right-wing Falange adversaries deliberately furnished the Prince of Spain only with sufficient funds to fly coach. A captain or aircraft purser often took pity on him, invited him into first class. Twice, this backfired; the Falange pilot entered the passenger cabin, told the future king to get his royal fanny back to coach where it belonged. A martyred Rodney Dangerfield of European nobility.<\/p>\n

Check me up: page 249 of the Spanish edition<\/a>, page 218 of the English edition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Addendum<\/span>: Madrid built dense TOD around a powerhouse transit grid. Densification of a city with an anemic transit grid will cram parking-slot-craving drivers into high-rises, with little practical alternatives to their vehicles. A 2007 article<\/a> is still worth a read today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guiri I will always be, but today I am a guiri with a more typically Madrile\u00f1o home. I moved far north of the colorful, historic central city, no longer stroll daily among rollaboard-toting visitors on Gran V\u00eda, less often overhear tourists chatting in a farrago of foreign tongues at Puerta del Sol. I am… <\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[183],"class_list":["post-3137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spain","tag-transit-oriented-development"],"yoast_head":"\nMadrid High-rise Living -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A long-term immigrant from the United States describes life in a not-untypical community of dense, transit-oriented high-rises in Madrid.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/transitophile.com\/chango\/madrid-high-rise-living\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Madrid High-rise 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