One of the most singular aspects of Sociópolis is the conservation, for the first time in Spain, of an agricultural zone within the fabric of the city.

The Sociópolis park will have a 165,000 m2 zone of amenities in a landscaped setting, with 8,404 linear metres of irrigation channels, the result of uncovering the existing channels, rehabilitating others, and creating new channels in the urban orchard-garden zone.

There will be a total of 7,409 metres of pedestrian walkways, which will also have lanes for bicycles.

A total of 10,094 individual plants, shrubs and trees will be planted, over and above the plants in the huerta orchard-garden zones. Of these some 3,500 will be trees, including mulberry, citrus, ficus, cypress and others.

The park has been designed by the architect Vicente Guallart, working in close collaboration with the engineer Manuel Colominas.

The Sociópolis park is the result of hybridization between the anthropized environment of the huerta and an area in which 2,800 social housing units will be constructed.

The Sociópolis park responds to new criteria of urban development, committed as it is to conserving the orchard-gardens and certain elements of the huerta landscape around the city and to integrating these as an environment that people can inhabit and use. The huerta becomes a back garden. We have drawn inspiration from images of Valencia's mediaeval gardens, which were literally inhabited. The Arabs regarded the huerta was their garden, an edible garden. It is not, then, like the kind of highly impersonal garden found in the middle of the city but a place where activity is defined and organized, in which the explicit intention is that people appropriate the space through their ongoing use of it. With this in mind the project defines a series of public amenities such as schools, youth centre, health centres and technological centres that will ensure an almost continuous use of the area around the park, while there will be constant activity and human presence in the park itself thanks to the sports zones and the urban orchard-gardens.

The criteria for the distribution of the plant species follows the principles apparent in the levels of the huerta, in which we find tall trees that shade the rest zones (such as palms or pines), fruit trees of medium height (such as oranges, lemons or soft fruits) and other plants and vegetables down at ground level.

The garden has been designed using traditional huerta species such as the mulberry trees that were introduced at some point in history in order to feed silkworms.

Various families of ficus have also been used, from fig-trees through to the Ficus retusa used to create the three kilometres of cubic topiary hedges (similar to those in the Alameda). Palm trees of the three principal species found in the Valencian landscape have also been used, namely the Phoenix dactylifera, the Washingtonia and the Palmera Canariensis or Royal Palm.
'The trees make the various circuits in the sector identifiable, so that the urban organization can be read by recognizing the different families of trees.'
Sociópolis is an exceptional project in that it is an initiative of the Generalitat Valenciana's Ministry of Territory and Housing, which has responsibility for planning and urbanism, the environment and housing, with the result that this emblematic project is capable of incorporating and integrating these three aspects.

There will also be a number of gardens with citrus trees such as wild oranges or lemons, which will create rest areas in their shade, like those found in various parts of the historic centre of Seville.

The sector will also have a botanical garden of fruit trees in which the residents themselves can cultivate over 150 species; this pioneering venture will introduce to Valencia a practice that is already functioning in other cities such as Seville and Barcelona.

There will also be an axis of Rosaceae that will include fruit-bearing varieties (such as climbing roses in a pergola 80 metres long) as well as rose bushes, allowing the changing seasons to leave their impression on the urban space.