Urban Criteria and City Development in Spain
City Criteria
Statistics are based on figures from Spain, using the INE (National Statistics Institute) approach, which accounts for incomplete population counts throughout the municipality.
Qualitative city definitions are based on these characteristics:
- Morphological Criteria: The formal aspect of the city.
- Functional Criteria: Based on urban economic activities, such as industry and services.
- Sociological Criteria: Defined according to specific social traits.
- Space: The city’s capacity to organize space.
Private Industry
Private industry experienced high urbanization rate growth.
Favored Growth Factors: Administrative and economic-social.
Stages of Urban Growth
- Mid-Nineteenth Century: Low population concentration. Main factors were provincial capital status and maritime trade.
- Mid-Nineteenth Century to Civil War: Urban growth was revealed, and the urbanization rate doubled, driven by industry.
- Civil War and Post-War: Slowed urban growth.
- Development Stage: The greatest economic and urban growth of the century, driven by industrial and tertiary activities.
Major cities focused population growth, leading to the development of major suburbs.
The Industrial City
Bourgeois Widening
This new space corresponds to the bourgeoisie’s desires for urban growth, representing their ideas of order, health, and economic benefits.
A) Creation:
- Expansion plans adopted a regular grid with straight, wide streets.
- Low-density plots.
- Buildings included palaces, villas, and gardens.
- Residential use was primarily bourgeois.
- The first extensions were in Barcelona (Cerdà ) and Madrid (Castro).
B) Modification Over Time:
- Plots became denser with building blocks on all four sides.
- Buildings became taller (verticalization).
- Land use in expansion areas began to include tertiary activities, extending from the main historic streets of the downtown area.
C) Update:
- Some well-accessed, aged areas have been refurbished and embellished to attract tertiary activities.
Industrial Worker Suburbs
Industrial plants were established on the urban periphery, near major city entrances, ports, or railway stations. Workers migrated to industrial cities but could not afford prices in historic areas or the extensions, leading them to settle in hidden towns or neighborhoods, and slums.
A) Disorganized Creation:
- Tightly woven and dense.
- Small, low-quality buildings.
- Intermingled land use: worker residences, industrial workshops, and warehouses.
B) Update:
- With urban growth, old industrial working-class neighborhoods have become more centrally located.
Residential Neighborhoods on the Periphery
Marginal or Slum Areas
These areas developed on illegal land without planning or organization. Self-built with scrap materials, they lacked primary services.
Official Protection Housing Estates
Further developed in the 1940s-1960s, built with state aid and with limited selling prices or rental rates.
Private Development Housing Estates
Emerged in the 1960s, featuring open weave blocks or towers with space for gardens or parking.
Closed Block Housing
Developed in the 1980s and 1990s as a way to restore human scale and organization on main streets.
Single-Family Houses
Built on the outskirts in the 1980s due to the middle class’s desire for contact with nature and the use of cars; open weave.