One of the main objectives of the Barcelona Provincial Council (Diputació de Barcelona), developed primarily through the Department of Territory and Sustainability, is promoting territorial balance and sustainability. The ultimate aim is to provide information and criteria to support local administrations in their land planning and management responsibilities and to strengthen their participation in regional projects affecting them. Since 2001, Barcelona Provincial Council has therefore been drawing up a territorial information system, the project SITxell (acronym in Catalan for Territorial Information System for the Network of Open Areas in the province of Barcelona), which contains a categorization and assessment of non-urban land based on the analysis of its ecological and socio-economic characteristics. SITxell is a cartographic and alphanumeric database on a 1:50 000 scale, run on Arcgis software, which helps with the study, analysis, evaluation and planning of the open areas in the province of Barcelona.
