Urban Centers: Metropolitan Areas and the Evolution of Valencia
Urban Centers: Metropolitan Areas
Metropolitan Area: Urban sprawl is a major city soul around which administratively encompasses several municipalities with economic and social relations and has the following property: it is headed by a major city whose economic activity is reaching out and leads to the area. Between the central city area and the nuclei, economic and social relations are established. The central city provides employment and services to the area’s population, and economic activities are installed from the central city. An essential communications network exists. From the social point of view, this has an urban lifestyle of the young population and social variety. Its spatial structure serves two models: the concentric crown and radial sector or sectors that form specialized areas in certain land uses.
Originating in Spain, it dates back to the first third of the twentieth century when Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao integrated rural municipalities. Its full metropolization was in 1969-present 1975. Since the crisis of 1975, these areas have undergone major transformations such as territorial expansion, decentralization of population, and economic activity from the central city area into the nuclei. This has created problems that grapple with urban planning. This is the responsibility of municipalities, and communities in autonomous regions have developed specific plans for these areas with the general guidelines for management that must be collected by the municipalities.
Management of the metropolitan area is the management of urban settlements seeking to avoid an excessive population densification and constructive management of economic activities. Diversification proposes its modernization. The intervention in transport must ensure the interrelationships between all the cores of the area and connections with the European system of national or global cities. Spatial undeveloped areas are under pressure from the growing urban sprawl. It aims to protect and preserve farming and vast green spaces for leisure.
Reflection of Plan A: Valencia
Valencia Street: Like those cities with a long history, Valencia presents a complex urban morphology, in which different areas corresponding to different stages of growth of the city can be distinguished: the old town, the widening, and the periphery.
The Old Town
It is the urbanized part of the city from its origin to the urban growth of the mid-nineteenth century. Valencia has a Roman origin and is located in the Gulf of Valencia, a short distance from the sea, in a meander of the River Turia, on a hill, safer from flooding. The city had a favorable situation with respect to communications (in the great coastal road) and on economic activity (it was surrounded by an environment of good agriculture).
In the medieval old town, it was surrounded by a wall at the time Muslim and the other in the Christian era (fourteenth century), which follows the course of the current round-up of the streets Guillén de Castro, Játiva, and Columbus. In it, some doors are preserved. Its functions were defensive, fiscal, and health-related. The plane was irregular in the Muslim period, with narrow winding streets and shapeless squares, and settled slightly after the Christian conquest (1283). This irregularity is observed mainly in its northern part, whose center is the cathedral. The south side was transformed in the nineteenth century, and squares were opened as new streets of Valencia, on the occasion of the installation in this area of the station.
The plot of the old town is compact, as for centuries, population growth within the city walls, which resulted in a gradual densification of the plot. The building, initially low-rise, has experienced a progressive deterioration, verticalization, and social morphology and in some areas, resulting in processes of renewal and replacement of houses of higher quality. The land use of the preindustrial city were residential, industrial (silk), and maritime commerce. Currently, the south is home to the CBD, where shops, offices, banks, and shows are settled. The old town preserves important monuments like the Cathedral and palaces and churches of different eras.
The Widening
Since the mid-nineteenth century the growth of the city forced to expand the urban precinct. The causes were agrarian prosperity, a first process of industrialization, and the new metro, which consolidated the city’s export function. The center became the importer and redistributor. To extend the city, the walls were demolished in the fourteenth century and instead created a foreign round that became the main street.
The widening was carried out around the south of the old town, in various stages that are limited by major roads. The first, between the old and the great highways of the Marques del Turia and Ferdinand, had inspired a flat grid in Barcelona, with a spacious plot in big houses. The second widening extended the previous one to the old city transit roads, which was replanned as a third outer ring or round.
The industrial suburbs were created mainly in the port area and in the south, with small houses and inferior materials, which suffered an early deterioration. In addition, urban growth led between 1870 and 1900 to annexing neighborhoods and surrounding villages, such as Rusafa, La Campana, Grao, etc., then still separate from the big city, but now integrated into the urban area and expanding the urban precinct at the expense of the garden. Unlike other cities, the high price of suburban land prevented the emergence of down areas.
The Periphery
In the second half of the twentieth century, industry and services grew strongly, and with them immigration, population, and urbanization, resulting in a large periphery that were installed in industrial areas, huge slums to welcome immigrants to the west and south of the expansion and equipment.
The main areas of urban growth since the mid-twentieth century were as follows:
- The south of the city following the path of an artificial course for the Turia, which borders the city on the west and south. The work, to start planning from the flood of 1957, was implemented in the mid-70s, and has also led to the creation of a round high-capacity traffic since the new channel is flanked by highways.
- North of the city, for the old runway turned into a green space. On the left bank of the river have created facilities.
- Roads of Madrid and Barcelona.
The port has been fully integrated into the city, presenting a large freight and passenger activity, and the city has spilled over peripheral municipalities into one large conurbation. Currently, the functions of the city are industrial and tertiary, in which, besides tourism, one must take into account the political and administrative, as a result of the location in the city of parliament and other institutions of the Autonomous Community. The garden has been the main loser in the process of urban expansion since the rich fields are being invaded by the building.