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Urban morphology and place identityin European cities: built heritage andinnovative designAspa Gospodini aa Department of Planning and Regional Development, Universityof Thessaly, Volos, GreecePublished online: 23 Jan 2007.
To cite this article: Aspa Gospodini (2004): Urban morphology and place identity in Europeancities: built heritage and innovative design, Journal of Urban Design, 9:2, 225-248
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Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 9. No. 2, 225–248, June 2004
Urban Morphology and Place Identity in EuropeanCities: Built Heritage and Innovative Design
ASPA GOSPODINI
Department of Planning and Regional Development, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece
ABSTRACT In the processes of economic and cultural globalization, European inte-gration and the blur of national identities in Europe, place identity emerges as a centralconcern of both scholars and other people. This paper examines the ways specific aspectsof urban morphology such as built heritage and the innovative design of space maycontribute to place identity in European cities. First, it develops a theoretical conjecturethat in post-modern multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies, innovative design of spacecan efficiently work as a place identity generator in the same ways built heritage has beenperforming in modern—culturally bounded and nation-state-oriented—European soci-eties. This conjecture is then tested by research in the city of Bilbao. The outcome of theresearch supports the argument that innovative design schemes: (1) may permitdivergent interpretations by individuals thereby fitting into the ‘diversity’ and ‘individ-ualization’ of new modernity; (2) may synchronize different ethnic/cultural/social groupsby offering themselves as a new common terrain for experiencing and familiarizing withnew forms of space; (3) by becoming landmarks and promoting tourism/economicdevelopment, may generate new social solidarities among inhabitants grounded on ‘civicpride’ and economic prospects.
Introduction
In the processes of economic globalization and European integration, Europeancities have been increasingly linked to forces external to their nationalboundaries; they appear to function as a unified (global) network of urbansettlements in competition (see for instance, Commission of the EuropeanCommunities, 1992; Jensen-Butler et al., 1997). There are scholars such as Castells(1993) who believe that as national states of Europe fade in their role, individualcities emerge as a driving force in the making of the new Europe. This is alsoaccompanied by an increasing ‘identity crisis’ of cities rooted in two realities:
• mass migrations, legal or illegal, are increasingly transforming European citiesinto heterogeneous, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies (see King, 1993,1995; Hall, 1995; Graham, 1998);
Correspondence Address: Aspa Gospodini, Department of Planning and Regional Develop-ment, University of Thessaly, Pedion Areos 38 334, Volos, Greece. Email:[email protected], [email protected]
1357-4809 Print/1469-9664 Online/04/020225-24 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1357480042000227834
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• the march to supra-nationality within the European Union (EU) is blurringnational identities (Castells, 1993; Gillis, 1994; Morley & Robins, 1995; Graham,1998).
In this context, place identity is becoming an issue of growing importance forboth scholars and people. Predicting how European cities may react, Castells(1993) believes that under such a crisis, European cities will be increasinglyoriented towards their local heritage—built heritage, cultural heritage—becausefirst, the weakening of national identities makes people uncertain about thepower holders of their destiny, thus pushing them into either individualistic(neo-liberalism) or collective (neo-nationalism) withdrawal; and secondly, theconsolidation of heterogeneous populations in European cities is happening at aperiod when national identities are most threatened. Similarly, Harvey (1989)believes that the response will be an increase in xenophobia and the resurgenceof reactionary place-bound politics as people search for old certainties andstruggle to construct or retain a more stable or bounded place identity. Theprotection and enhancement of built heritage appear as one such attempt to fixthe meanings of places, while enclosing and defending them.
In contrast to the above points of view associating the struggle of cities forplace identity in a globalized world with the protection and enhancement ofbuilt heritage, some studies question the ability of built heritage to work as aplace identity generator in post-modern societies, whilst others point to new,more effective means for reinforcing place identity. In the former studies (seeTunbridge & Ashworth, 1996; Graham, 1998; Graham et al., 2000), the associationof place identity with built heritage is seen as a conventional and largelyunchallenged wisdom. Built heritage is considered a contested entity, andmanipulations in the production of built heritage in European cities haverendered the conserved urban landscape an entity that is in most cases nation-ally identified and even morphologically standardized, and thereby insufficientto work as a means of establishing and consolidating place identity in ourpost-modern, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural European urban societies. Thelatter studies (see Jacobs, 1996; McNeill, 2000; McNeill & Tewdwr-Jones, 2002;Evans, 2003; Hannigan, 2003; Beriatos & Gospodini, 2004) develop parallelarguments converging in that the efforts of cities for place identity have turnedon innovative design of space and flagship building projects in the last decadeor so. More specifically, McNeill & Tewdwr-Jones (2002) argue that the threat-ened nation-states at a time of economic and cultural globalization, and inparticular the era of European integration, use a diverse array of public buildingprojects exhibiting design innovation—from parliament buildings to culturalflagships, to conference centres and expo sites—as a source of “rebrandingnations” (McNeill & Tewdwr-Jones, 2002, p. 742). Among recent such mega-projects, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Reichstag Parliament in Berlinare considered by McNeill & Tewdwr-Jones (2002) as the best examples showingthis. Regarding the issue of place identity from the point of view of the newconsumption economy of the post-modern city, Evans (2003) and Hannigan(2003) argue that the increasing branding of commercial entertainment productsand leisure shopping has been accompanied by the city’s ‘hard branding’.Flagship building projects—and especially cultural and entertainment build-ings—with innovative design trends are used to develop a marketable image toconsumers; they facilitate tourists and residents to orientate themselves in the
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city’s consumption spaces; they constitute a new species of landmarks ‘hardbranding’ the city (Evans, 2003; Hannigan, 2003).
In this framework of uncertainty, it seems challenging to investigate howparticular aspects of urban morphology may contribute to place identity. Assuch, built heritage and innovative design of space will be examined, and theways they may work as place identity generators will be analysed and juxta-posed.
Questioning Built Heritage as a Place Identity Generator in ContemporaryEuropean Societies
Since the late 1970s and the predominance of post-modernism and typologicalapproaches in design (see Krier, 1978; Rossi, 1982; Vidler, 1978; Rowe & Koetter,1978; Colquhoun, 1981), built heritage in European cities has been a focus ofattention in the discourse of architecture, urban design and planning. Parallel tothis discourse, the EU has, as expected, been constantly supporting built heritageby launching special programmes and financing research and projects of build-ing restoration, urban conservation, urban renewal and revitalization.1 Reflectingall these, built heritage has constituted a great field of design interventions inalmost all European cities.
In the last decade or so, built heritage has been emphasized further for itsgreat potential for promoting economic growth in cities, and particularly urbantourism development (see Ashworth & Tunbridge, 1990; Prentice, 1993; Ash-worth & Larkham, 1994; Morris, 1994; Herbert, 1995). In the framework ofinter-city competition and the new urban politics (see Cox, 1995; Boyle &Rogerson, 2001), the task of urban governance has increasingly become thecreation of urban conditions (physical and economic) sufficiently attractive tolure prospective inward investments; and the city’s image and especially builtheritage have been considered particularly critical for the city’s landscapephysiognomy, marking its differences from other cities. Evidence as to this is thenumerous urban renewal projects by which old harbour warehouses, old indus-trial buildings, old railway stations and other kinds of underused heritagebuildings have been conserved and redesigned to accommodate new uses:mainly culture and leisure. The predominance of cultural uses in the reuse ofheritage buildings and spaces is related to the emerging post-Fordist new urbaneconomies (see McNeill & While, 2001),2 among which the most flourishing isthe economy of leisure and culture (see Zukin, 1991, 1995; Bianchini, 1993; Pratt,1997; Scott, 1997, 2000; Crewe & Beaverstock, 1998; Hall, 2000; Evans, 2001; ClarkClark et al., 2002). As Zukin (1995, pp.1–2) writes, “with the disappearance oflocal manufacturing industries and periodic crisis in government and finance,culture is more and more the business of cities: the basis of their touristattractions and their unique competitive edge”. In the words of Hall (2000,p. 640), “culture is now seen as the magic substitute for all the lost factories andwarehouses, and as a device that will create a new urban image, making the citymore attractive to mobile capital and mobile professional workers”.
Nowadays—while proceeding into more advanced phases of economicglobalization and European integration and facing an increasing transformationof European cities into multi-ethnic and multi-cultural entities—the effectivenessof built heritage as a means of creating landscape physiognomy and therebygenerating place identity in cities may be questioned. Parallel to the physical
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configuration of European cities, which was in all cases created, developed andtransformed by someone for some purpose, built heritage is, according toGraham (1998, p. 43), “that we have chosen to conserve from the past”. Thisraises questions about the criteria of selection in the production of built heritagein European cities and the effect on the present.
In many studies (see Tunbridge, 1984, 1994, 1998; Tunbridge & Ashworth,1996; Ashworth, 1998; Graham et al., 2000), built heritage is considered acontested entity, and much of what we see today as built heritage in Europeancities is considered a product of manipulations representing a deliberate encod-ing of symbolic meaning. Investigating how built heritage has been producedand who is the producer of the conserved European urban landscape, Ashworth(1998) suggests that the answer might be conceptualized through three broadideas concerning the exercise of power in European societies:
• the concept of political legitimation, as introduced by Habermas (1996), wheregovernments as well as individuals feel a need to justify their exercise ofpower, or just their very existence, through an appeal to particular aspects ofthe past that appear to confer that right;
• the dominant ideology thesis, as introduced in Abercrombie et al. (1982),which argues that a governing dominant group imposes its values upon agoverned subordinate group;
• the cultural capital thesis, as introduced by Bourdieu (1977), which extendsthe above two ideas by postulating the existence alongside the economic realmof a cultural capital composed not only of the artworks and buildings of asociety, but also, more fundamentally, of standards of taste that select andinterpret them.
In the above framework, built heritage of European cities has been ‘filtered’over a long period of time, and as a consequence, much of what exists nowadaysas conserved urban landscape is reduced in meaning. Describing the ways inwhich reduction of meaning has occurred, Ashworth (1998) introduces the terms‘eradification’ and ‘museumification’. By ‘eradification’, he means the destruc-tion or disappearance of artefacts, spaces, buildings and elements that hasoccurred either involuntarily (e.g. due to war or natural disasters) or voluntarily(e.g. due to modernization, change of political regime or change of culturalparadigm). By ‘museumification’, he means changes in the functional dimensionand/or formal dimension of artefacts, spaces, buildings and elements that haveoccurred on purpose—in order to transform the meaning of the conservedschemata and use them as tourism/economic resources. As typical cases ofmuseumification, Ashworth (1998) presents the Christian Orthodox churches inthe former USSR, the Church of Haghia Sophia in Istanbul and almost allfortification walls and castles in European cities.
The main principles or objectives underlying the manipulation processes ofbuilt heritage—or eradification and museumification, to use Ashworth’s (1998)terms—seem to be (1) imprinting national identities onto the conserved urbanforms and (2) creating a distinctive urban landscape by means of built heritage.
(1) Imprinting National Identities onto the Conserved Urban Forms
According to Gillis (1994), national identity involves a widely shared memory ofcommon past for people who have never seen or talked to one another in the
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flesh. The sense of belonging to the same nationality depends as much onforgetting as on remembering—the past being reconstructed as a trajectory to thenational present in order to guarantee a common future. As Woolf (1996)suggests, a national identity is an abstract concept that sums up the collectiveexpression of a subjective, individual sense of belonging to a sociopolitical unit:the nation-state. Nationalistic rhetoric assumes not only that individuals formpart of a nation (through language, blood, choice, residence or some othercriterion), but also that they identify with the territorial unit of the nation-state.This is one reason why landscape, and especially urban landscape, is understoodas a ‘terrain’ where national identities can be created, developed and enhanced.A second reason is that urban landscape, like a text, constitutes an orderedassemblage of objects and, thereby, can act as a signifying system (Eco, 1986;Duncan, 1990; Barnes & Duncan, 1992; Ashworth, 1998) or a “highly complexdiscourse, a language” (Barthes, 1986, p. 92) in which a whole range of economic,political, social and cultural issues can be encoded (Daniel, 1993). Finally, a thirdreason is that a national identity is created in particular social, historical andpolitical contexts and, as such, is a situated and socially constructed entity: anarrative. The power of a narrative—such as a national identity—rests on itsability to evoke the accustomed, to appeal to “our desire to reduce the unfam-iliar to the familiar” (Barnes & Duncan, 1992, pp. 11–12). It is exactly this abilityof built heritage that can make it a powerful narrative itself, capable of support-ing a broader narrative: the national identity. Explaining this, Graham (1998,p. 40) writes that landscape narratives, and especially built heritage narratives,facilitate the development of national identities by “denoting particular places ascentres of collective cultural consciousness”.
To turn back to Ashworth’s (1998) eradification and museumification, manyEuropean cities provide a kind of evidence for such manipulation processes bywhich built heritage has been finally produced, or selected by criteria, so as toconstitute a great narrative supporting national identities, and thereby legitimiz-ing the hegemony of nation-states and justifying and guaranteeing commonpolitical governances over particular land territories: the territories of nation-states (see Figure 1).3 Imprinting of national identities onto conserved urbanforms in European cities renders built heritage single-dimensioned and lessmeaningful to (1) the increasingly multi-ethnic, multi-national European urbansocieties and (2) the post-modern European urban societies dominated by theideas of diversity and individualization. In Bhadha’s (1994, p. 76) words, there isa process of “DissemiNation”: new communities of interest are evolving byvirtue of the divergent and changing identities in post-modern and trans-na-tional urban societies which undermine and eventually negate the ‘out of many,one’ ideology of nationalism and nation-state.
(2) Creating ‘Distinct’ Urban Landscapes by Means of Built Heritage
As is often claimed by architects, urban designers and planners, urban conser-vation contributes to place identity by both evoking the city’s history andtradition (built heritage, cultural heritage) and creating distinct or uniqueenvironmental images to visitors and inhabitants. However, following manydecades of various urban conservation practices in European cities, there arenowadays scholars such as Ashworth (1998) and Tunbridge (1998) who believethat urban conservation practices have not produced distinct urban landscapes
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Figure 1. The processes destabilizing built heritage as a strong place identity generator in contempor-ary multi-ethnic and multicultural European cities.
but rather have created morphologically standardized urban landscapes that donot contribute to place identity. Ashworth (1998) goes as far as arguing thatthere is enough evidence to state a paradox: the more urban conservation ispractised in European cities, the more morphologically homogenized citiesbecome. This is related to certain parameters of urban conservation that under-mine the efforts to create distinct urban landscape and enhancing place identityby means of built heritage. These are the following.
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Built Heritage and Innovative Design 231
• Dominant schools of thought in urban conservation. Architects, urban designersand planners working on projects of building restoration and urban renewalare—like all other practitioners—conscious of the dominant school(s) ofthought of the particular time period. Common educational curricula, sharedprofessional training and subsequent networking help establish and transmitmore or less common attitudes at international level (e.g. reflecting inter-national design movements) or at national level (e.g. reflecting nationalschools of thought—French School, Dutch School, Polish School, etc.). As aconsequence, restoration and renewal schemes of the same period oftenexhibit common properties (morphological, spatial, functional) and can berecognized by the time of their execution and/or the school of thoughtdominant at that time. Even new buildings developed on sites in conservedurban areas reflect the dominant design attitudes held at the time about hownew and traditional buildings should neighbour each other. On the basis of allthese, Ashworth (1998) argues that restoration, conservation, renewal andrevitalization schemes in European cities convey messages more about thedominant attitudes on built heritage held at the time of their realization ratherthan about the old structures themselves and/or the historic period in whichthey were first developed.
• Standardized micro-scale redesign of public open spaces. It has been observed thatin conserved urban areas, the selected styles of street furniture, pavingmaterials, signage and greenery, etc. are usually neo-vernacular or ‘historis-tic’—in any case, different from those in modern urban areas. However, inhistoric urban areas that have been revitalized and redesigned during thesame time period, the selected styles often appear to be the same. Suchstandardized micro-morphologies are described and termed by Ashworth(1998) as ‘catalogue heritagization’.
• Advertised ‘best’ conservation policies and practices. Networks of historic citieswithin the EU,4 as well as international organizations and institutions such asUnesco, Habitat and ICCROM,5 try to disseminate ‘best’ policies and practiceson urban conservation. The transfer of policies, practices and techniques tendsto reduce rather than increase local distinctiveness and place identity. In otherwords, it helps the generation of a kind of ‘world heritage’ (Ashworth, 1997).
Under all the above conditions, built heritage is getting weaker as a placeidentity generator in contemporary European cities. This is so because of thefollowing.
• Imprinting national identities onto conserved urban forms renders built heritagesingle-dimensioned and less meaningful to both (1) the increasingly multi-eth-nic, multi-national European urban societies and (2) the increasingly multi-cul-tural, post-modern European urban societies dominated by the ideas ofdiversity and individualization (Featherstone, 1991).
• Standardized design and morphologies in urban conservation render built heritageless effective in creating distinct urban landscape and adding to the city’sphysiognomy and, thereby, less competitive as a means to promote tourism/economic development.
Figure 1 summarizes all the above and schematically presents the processes bywhich built heritage tends to get weaker as a place identity generator incontemporary European cities.
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Seeking New Paths to Place Identity
Thinking of built heritage as a constructed landscape narrative somehow evok-ing tradition and the city’s past, and reducing the unfamiliar environment to thefamiliar, one might conceive of innovative design of space as its ‘opposite’, i.e.formal and spatial schemata somehow dismissing tradition and reducing thefamiliar environment to the unfamiliar. On the grounds that post-modernEuropean urban societies are being transformed almost into their ‘opposite’, i.e.from nation-state-oriented and culturally bounded entities into multi-ethnic andmulti-cultural entities, can innovative design become a new post-modern path toplace identity? As already mentioned, there are studies arguing that innovativedesign schemes and especially flagship cultural and entertainment buildings area means for rebranding nations (see McNeill, 2000; McNeill & Tewdwr-Jones,2002) and for hard-branding cities (Evans, 2003; Hannigan, 2003).
Built heritage has long been an effective ‘tool’ working for place identity intwo ways (see also Figure 2):
• By referring to both national identity and the city’s tradition, built heritage hasbeen invoking something common among individuals—members of a nation-state-oriented urban society. In this way, it has been offering a sort of ‘spatialmembership’ to almost all individuals and social groups of such a society.
• By adding to the city’s landscape physiognomy, built heritage has beenpromoting economic development of cities as tourism places and/or en-trepreneurial centres. In this way, it has been creating a sort of social solidarity(and perhaps civic pride) among individuals, grounded in economicprospects.
In the era of post-modern European societies, can innovative design perform asa place identity generator in the ways in which built heritage has been perform-ing in modern European urban societies?
Investigating the Potential of Innovative Design of Space
Innovative design of urban space would be conceived as:
• formal schemata which are in contradiction to the morphological patternscharacterizing the city’s landscape (e.g. dominant architectural elements, signsand styles, the geometries of the street system, the urban block system, theopen space system, the skyline, etc.); and/or
• spatial configurations which shift the existing structure of urban space (e.g.shifting the city’s centre or altering the pattern(s) of the street system, theurban block system, the open spaces system, etc.).
The above conditions are often fulfilled by pioneer design projects marking thepassage from one dominant design paradigm to another.6 Within the contempor-ary design paradigm, such conditions are—it is claimed—fulfilled by, for in-stance, Frank O. Gehry’s buildings,7 and especially his Guggenheim Museum inBilbao, Calatrava’s projects,8 including bridges, towers, museums, exhibitionhalls, airports and railway stations in many European cities, and most of all hisCity of Arts and Sciences in Valencia. Interpreting these design schemes,scholars (see Van Bruggen, 1999; Tzonis, 1999; Blanco, 2001) argue that they areproviding the city with experimental new types of public space. In Blanco’s(2001, p. 20) words, “they create and define new cells of public space that
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Built Heritage and Innovative Design 233
provide the user with new possibilities…and this makes every such designscheme an unusual and unique element of the city” (present author’s translation).As described by Tzonis (1999) and Calatrava (2001), a challenging task for suchdesign schemes is to create place identity in urban areas that have been aban-doned, have declined or which lack a strong morphological character: a physiog-nomy.
Figure 2. A theoretical conjecture about the ways built heritage and innovative design may work asplace identity generators respectively in modern and post-modern European urban societies.
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Avant-garde design schemes offering equal chances to divergent cultures. In contrastto built heritage that is layered by more or less concrete meaning, avant-gardedesign schemes, it is claimed, generate new types of public space, therebypermitting new and divergent interpretations by individuals and social/culturalgroups. Thus, they may first fit well into the ‘diversity’ and ‘individualization’of post-modern European societies, and secondly, they may synchronize differ-ent ethnic/social/cultural groups by becoming a new common terrain forexperiencing and familiarizing with new urban forms. Describing the relation-ship between people and space in the building of the Guggenheim Museum,Bilbao, Flanagan (1998, p.113; emphasis added) writes:
The building charms and prods people with endless promises of newsurprises…Gehry has created a cultural exchange fueled by a dynamicdaily give-and-take between people and building, instead of the usualone-way pontification, architects usually give…He lets people piecetogether their own interpretation, and invites them to enjoy the pride ofcomposition. Viewers can feel like collaborators, or rather, conspiratorsin their interpretations. And no reading is right or wrong.
In this respect, avant-garde design schemes may offer ‘spatial membership’ to allindividuals and socio-cultural groups. In other words, they may work asmonuments, according to Lefebvre’s (1991) definition. A monument has thefunction of establishing membership; “monumental space” offers each memberof a society an “image of that membership” that it constitutes (Lefebvre, 1991,p. 220).
In this context, it does not seem surprising that in the last decade, designerssuch as Calatrava have often been invited by European cities hosting multi-eth-nic and multi-cultural major events such as the Olympic Games or World Expoto endow the city’s landscape with their multi-interpretable building schemesand spaces.9
Avant-garde design schemes promoting urban economic development and consolidatingsocial solidarity. Throughout the history of urban forms, design innovations inurban space—whether new architectural forms or urban design schemes—appear as an outcome of the economic growth of cities and/or countries.Marking the era of economic globalization and inter-city competition, a reverseprocess seems to be taking place: innovative design can be—and is being—consciously used as a powerful means for the economic development of cities(Gospodini, 2002). Successful use of innovative design (and redesign) of urbanspace in cities such as Barcelona, Seville and especially Bilbao, Spain, provideevidence on the positive impact of avant-garde design schemes on urbaneconomic development.10
As argued by Gospodini (2002), innovative design of space appears to be akey factor of economic development in all categories and groups of cities:metropolitan cities, larger cities, smaller cities, cities in the core and cities in theperiphery (economic and/or geographical) of Europe. However, it becomesparticularly critical in the rather ‘disadvantaged’ group of smaller peripheralEuropean cities lacking indigenous resources to counter the effect of ‘marginal-ization’ and decline within the global (unified) urban system of Europe. This isrelated to an emerging new paradigm concerning the relationship betweenurban morphology and urban tourism: irrespective of the particular functions
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Built Heritage and Innovative Design 235
and activities accommodated in space, innovative design of space (whetherbuildings, or public open spaces) can make urban morphology in itself and ofitself a sightseeing, a tourism/economic, resource (see Gospodini, 2001).
From this point of view, avant-garde design schemes may promote—in asimilar way to built heritage—the city’s economic development and, thereby,may generate new ‘social solidarities’ among inhabitants, grounded in economicexpectations.
Figure 2 summarizes all the above and presents a theoretical conjectureabout the ways in which built heritage and innovative design may work as placeidentity generators in modern and post-modern European urban societies,respectively.
Testing Built Heritage and Innovative Design as Place Identity Generators: The CaseStudy of Bilbao
The theoretical conjecture presented in Figure 2 was tested by research. The cityof Bilbao was selected as a case study for two reasons.
• The city combines a well-preserved historical centre with important monu-ments from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and some world-famous innova-tive design schemes developed in the last 6 years—with the GuggenheimMuseum ranked at the top.
• Bilbao is the capital of the Basque country, Spain, a European district charac-terized by powerful local government authorities, a relatively high degree ofadministrative and financial autonomy within Spain and inhabitants withparticularly strong feelings of national identity (see McNeill, 2000). If researchin this city pointed out that innovative design of space is effectively workingas a place identity generator, then this would be even more the case in otherEuropean cities.11
The research took place in October 2002. A questionnaire survey was addressedto two main categories of users of urban space: (1) inhabitants; and (2) visitors.12
Within the category of inhabitants, research distinguished three subcategories:(1) low-income people; (2) middle and upper middle classes; and (3) educatedpeople. In this way, research took into consideration the possibility of differentsocial/cultural/economic groups of inhabitants having different understandingsof place identity and its relationship to urban morphology. Similarly, within thebroad category of visitors, research also distinguished two subcategories: (1)tourists, i.e. individuals from other parts of Spain or other countries who werehaving a holiday in Bilbao for a few days; and (2) long-stay visitors, i.e.individuals from other parts of Spain or other countries who were staying inBilbao for a period of a few weeks or a few months while working or studying.In this way, the research attempted to explore whether foreign people staying inBilbao for a few days while on holiday have different understandings of placeidentity and its relationship to urban morphology than foreign people staying inBilbao for a longer period while working or studying.
The aim of the survey was to reach a total of 150 interviews and, inparticular, at least 30 interviews in each subcategory so that the research, basedon a random sample, would have statistical significance (see Ebdon, 1990). Afinal total of 187 interviews were carried out, 50 with inhabitants/low-incomepeople, 50 with inhabitants/middle and upper middle classes, 39 with inhabi-tants/educated people, 30 with tourists and 18 with long-stay visitors. Therefore,
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Figure 4. Arriaga Theatre: this is a 19th-centuryFigure 3. The City Hall: this is a 19th-centurybuilding (1890) in eclectic architectural style, de-building in eclectic style, designed in 1892 by
Joaquin Rucoba. It has outstanding interior signed by Joaquin Rucoba and Octavio deToledo. The building stages operas and has out-spaces, especially the Arab Room, where mar-standing interior spaces; it is claimed that theriages take place.
design was inspired by Paris Opera House.
it may be said that in all subcategories except the last one the research outcomeis statistically significant.
The questionnaire provided the interviewees with a list of 10 buildings andpublic open spaces. Five of them are important elements of Bilbao’s builtheritage: the City Hall (Figure 3), Arriaga Theatre (Figure 4), St Nicholas Churchand Square (Figure 5), St Anton’s Church and Bridge (Figure 6) and Plaza Nueva(Figure 7). Five of them represent innovative design schemes developed in thelast decade: the Guggenheim Museum (Figure 8), the Metro entrances andstations (Figure 9), Sondica Airport (Figure 10), Euskalduna Congress andConcert Hall (Figure 11) and Campo Volantin Footbridge (Figure 12). In select-ing the sample, the criterion was the importance of these buildings and openspaces as presented in (1) the official tourist guide of the city of Bilbao (seewww.bilbao.net/ingles/visitantes/descubrebilbao) and (2) recent publicationsfocusing on innovative design and international architectural paradigms (e.g. seeVan Bruggen, 1999; Tzonis, 1999; Blanco, 2001).
Interviews were carried out in different places in Bilbao, as follows.
• For inhabitants/low-income people, interviews took place in Ribera Market, thecentral covered food market of the city, offering low prices. Interviews werein Spanish.
• For inhabitants/middle and upper middle classes, interviews took place in La GranVia and Ercile Pedestrian Street—shopping streets where expensive andtrendy shops are located. Interviews were in Spanish.
• For inhabitants/educated people, interviews took place in the Department ofApplied Economics, University of the Basque Country.13 The sample includedinterviews with both academic staff and students. Interviews were in Englishor Spanish.
• For long-stay visitors, interviews took place in the student hall of the Universityof the Basque Country and in the offices of international companies in Bilbao.Interviews were in English.
• For tourists interviews took place in front of the Guggenheim Museum, theMuseum of Bellas Artes and Hotel Conte Ducque. Interviews were in English.
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Built Heritage and Innovative Design 237
Figure 6. St Anton’s Church and Bridge: this isFigure 5. St Nicholas Church and Square: athe oldest church in the city; it was built at themid-18th-century church in moderate Baroque
end of the 16th century in the Gothic style.style designed by Ignacio de Ibero y Erkizia. Ithas important altarpieces and sculptures by Joan
de Mena.
Figure 8. The Guggenheim Museum, designedFigure 7. Plaza Nueva is Bilbao’s oldest square.It is a public open space, square in shape, and by Frank O. Gehry.surrounded by identical buildings in Neo-classi-cal style designed by Antonio de Echevarria in1849. On all sides there are colonnades with
Doric columns and 49 arches.
Figure 9. The Metro entrances and stations. All Figure 10. Sondica Airport: the main buildingsentrances of the Metro stations have an identical were designed by Santiago Calatrava.form and were designed by Norman Foster As-
sociates.
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238 A. Gospodini
Figure 11. Euskalduna Congress and ConcertHall: this building complex accommodates Bil-bao’s symphony orchestra and the Opera Festi-
Figure 12. Campo Volantin Footbridge: this isval. Its form was intended to resemble a ship in
located in the centre of Bilbao close to the Gug-a dry dock, commemorating the old Euskalduna
genheim Museum; it was designed by SantiagoShipyards, which formerly stood on the same
Calatrava.site. It was designed by Federico Soriano and
Dolores Palacios.
The questionnaire raised three main questions. Each question had three parts, asfollows.
(1) Which of the listed buildings and open spaces do you think create a distinctand/or unique urban landscape in Bilbao? Which one do you consider best?And why?
(2) Which of the listed buildings and open spaces give you a sense that spacesomehow belongs to you or represents you, in the sense that you are allowedto give your own meaning and interpretation of space? Which one do youconsider best? And why?
(3) As a citizen of Bilbao, which of the listed buildings and public open spaces area source of ‘civic pride’ for you and allow you personally to have greatereconomic expectations from tourism in/the economic development of Bil-bao? Which one do you consider best? And why? Of course, this questionwas not addressed to visitors.
For the first part of all three questions, interviewees were allowed to make morethan one choice of building/open space from the list offered. For the second partof all three questions, referring to ‘Which one do you consider best?’, intervie-wees had to make only one choice among those buildings/open spaces alreadyselected in the first part of the question. Finally, for the third part of all threequestions, interviewees had to give a short interpretation in a few words. Theseanswers were analysed, codified and classified in three groups as: (1) answersassociated with the morphology of space; (2) answers associated with the senseof space; and (3) answers associated with the meaning of space.14
Regarding the first question, the percentages of choices made by all groupsof interviewees are presented graphically in Figure 13. According to these data,both built heritage and innovative design appear to represent important meansof creating distinct and/or unique urban landscape but innovative design tendsto prevail between the two. This is the case for all groups examined. However,the prevalence is striking in the case of tourists while it is relatively very weakin the case of inhabitants/low-income people. There seems to be an increasingrecognition and prevalence of innovative design while moving from low-incomeinhabitants towards well-off inhabitants, educated inhabitants, long-stay visitorsand tourists.
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Built Heritage and Innovative Design 239
Figure 13. Bilbao: different categories of users of urban space selecting built heritage and/orinnovative design schemes as elements that create distinct and/or unique urban landscape in
Bilbao. Percentage of choices.
As opposed to what one might have expected, inhabitants are not thinkingof their heritage schemes as the strongest elements creating a unique local urbanmorphology. On the contrary, they appear to have a similar attitude to tourists/visitors and select innovative design schemes as more effective elements increating a unique urban landscape. This may be interpreted on the basis of twophenomena. First, as argued earlier, dominant national and international schoolsof thought in conservation and micro-scale redesign of traditional buildings andopen spaces have created morphologically standardized historical urban cores.Secondly, codified forms of social behaviour (e.g. customs, ideologies) intowhich people used to socialize and formulate attitudes do not function in thepost-modern era as they used to do in the past. Indeed ‘diversity’, ‘individual-ization’ and an increased sophistication reinforce the personal basis of decisionsand attitudes (Featherstone, 1991). This orientates both inhabitants and tourists/visitors towards new urban forms rather than standardized old morphologies.
All groups selected the Guggenheim Museum as the best among the otherchoices. More precisely, the Guggenheim Museum was selected as the best by100% of long-stay visitors, 87.5% of tourists, 66% of inhabitants/low-incomepeople, 68% of inhabitants/middle and upper middle classes and 79.49% ofinhabitants/educated people. Again, there is an increasing credit given toinnovative design moving from low-income inhabitants towards well-off inhab-itants, educated inhabitants, tourists and long-stay visitors. The percentages falldramatically for all other buildings/open spaces of the list, ranging (1) from aminimum of 0% to a maximum of 4.17% (corresponding to Campo VolantinBridge) in the case of tourists/visitors, (2) from 0% to 16% (Arriaga Theatre) inthe case of inhabitants/low-income people, (3) from 0% to 14% (Arriaga Theatre)in the case of inhabitants/middle and upper middle classes and (4) from 0% to10.81% (Arriaga Theatre) in the case of inhabitants/educated people.
Regarding the answers to ‘Why is this the best?’, most of them areassociated with the meaning of space in the context of Bilbao city or theEuropean urban network. Fewer answers were associated with the morphology
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240 A. Gospodini
Figure 14. Bilbao: different categories of users of urban space selecting built heritage and innovativedesign schemes as elements giving users a sense that space belongs to them or represents them.
Percentage of choices.
of space and even fewer were related to the sense of space. For tourists, the mostcommon answer was “It is unique in Bilbao and in Europe” for long-stayvisitors, “It changed the city” for inhabitants/low-income people, “It is famousand thus very important for the city” and for both the middle and upper middleclasses and educated inhabitants, “It is the symbol of the city”.
All the above answers to the first question point to the innovative design ofspace being recognized as a tool for the creation of landmarks in the context ofboth the city as a local urban system as well as large urban networks to whichthe city belongs (e.g. European urban networks). As such a tool, innovativedesign appears to be credited more by tourists/visitors and educated inhabitantsthan by all other groups.
Turning to the second question, which deals with the degree to which builtheritage and innovative design respectively provide spaces that people feelattached to, or belonging to, the percentages of choices made by all groups ofinterviewees are presented graphically in Figure 14.
These data strengthen the status of built heritage in comparison to innova-tive design. However, innovative design still remains powerful. More precisely,inhabitants and tourists/visitors appear to differ in their preferences. Touristsand long-stay visitors seem to feel relatively more comfortable in innovativedesign spaces than in built heritage spaces. By contrast, inhabitants seem to feelmore attached to spaces provided by heritage schemes than by innovativedesign schemes. Among the different groups of inhabitants, the importance ofheritage schemes is relatively stronger in the case of low-income people.
These results indicate that in post-modern urban societies built heritage stillappears to be very efficient in producing representative urban space for inhabi-tants, especially for low-income inhabitants, who usually have stronger ties withthe local tradition. In contrast to this, innovative design appears to be moreefficient in producing meaningful and friendly space for non-local culturalgroups such as tourists, foreign students and foreign professionals, etc.
As the best one, a striking 100% of long-stay visitors and 58.33% of touristsselected the Guggenheim Museum while the percentages for all other buildings
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Built Heritage and Innovative Design 241
and open spaces in the list were very low—ranging from 0% to 12.5% andmaking Plaza Nueva second (12.5%) and Campo Volantin Footbridge third(4.17%). By contrast, choices by inhabitants created an even distribution betweenhistoric monuments and innovative design schemes: (1) low-income peopleselected Arriaga Theatre as the best (26%) with the Guggenheim Museumsecond (22%) and St Anton’s Church and Bridge third (14%); (2) the middle andupper middle classes selected Arriaga Theatre as the best (16%) with theGuggenheim Museum second (14%) and the Metro stations third (10%); and (3)educated people chose Plaza Nueva as the best (33.33%) with the GuggenheimMuseum second (25.64%) and Campo Volantin Footbridge third (7.7%).
Regarding the answers to the question ‘Why is this the best?’, most of thelow-income and middle and upper middle class inhabitants appear to haveselected Arriaga Theatre as the best mainly by virtue of the meaning of space inthe city’s tradition and history (56% and 63%, respectively). The most commonanswers were respectively “A beautiful building in the traditional architecturalstyle” and “A meaningful building in the context of the city’s tradition”.Educated people selected Plaza Nueva as the best mainly for the sense of space(85%). The most common answer was “It is a relaxing and comfortable openspace”. Long-stay visitors selected the Guggenheim Museum as the best for thesense of space. The most common answer was “It gives a feeling of freedom inexperiencing space”. Tourists also selected the Guggenheim Museum as the bestbut in this case by virtue of the morphology of space (46%). The most commonanswers can be summarized as “No space looks similar and you can give yourown interpretation”.
Therefore, by contrast to common arguments presenting built heritage andhistorical centres of European cities as particularly favourite places for touristsbecause they are very rich in meaning and can be interpreted again and again,thereby allowing tourists to give their own interpretation, Bilbao supports theopposite: tourists show a strong preference in seeking new meaning, their ownmeaning, in new forms of space. On the contrary, historical spaces appear moremeaningful to inhabitants. However, still in the case of inhabitants, numericaldifferences between innovative design and built heritage are not very strong,crediting innovative design schemes almost as highly as heritage schemes in theproduction of spaces which inhabitants feel attached to, belonging to or repre-sented by. Therefore, it can be argued that innovative design may synchronizein space inhabitants and tourists/visitors, and it can do so better than builtheritage.
Regarding the third question, the percentages of choices (see Figure 15)were similar to those of the first question, showing a striking prevalence ofinnovative design in comparison with built heritage. More precisely, the out-come shows that inhabitants relate their city’s tourism/economic developmentmore to innovative design than to built heritage.
Of the choices made, the Guggenheim Museum was, by a long way, selectedas the best by all groups of inhabitants: by low-income people at 92%, by themiddle and upper middle classes at 84% and by educated people at 76.92%. Forall other buildings and spaces in the list, the percentages were very low. Formost of them, the percentage was zero. In addition, it is significant that allgroups of inhabitants gave as second the Euskalduna Congress and ConcertHall, with percentages ranging from 6% to 12.82%, and as third the Metro
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242 A. Gospodini
Figure 15. Bilbao: different categories of inhabitants selecting built heritage and/or innovative designschemes as elements that make them feel ‘civic pride’ and have greater economic expectations from
tourism/economic development of Bilbao. Percentage of choices.
stations, with percentages ranging from 2% to 5.13%. Therefore, the first three inthe hierarchy were all innovative design schemes.
Turning to the question ‘Why is this the best?’, most answers of differentgroups of interviewees appointing the Guggenheim Museum as the best wereassociated mainly with the meaning of space in the context of Bilbao city and/orthe European urban network. The most common answers were: (1) for low-in-come people, “It brings tourism and money to the city” (2) for the middle andupper middle classes, “It is an international paradigm promoting tourism/econ-omic development; and (3) for educated people, “It is the most touristic place”.
In the light of these results, it can be argued that in post-modern societies,innovative design schemes—like built heritage in the past—can generate newsocial solidarities among inhabitants grounded in ‘civic pride’ and commoneconomic prospects.
Conclusions: Design Policies and Strategies in the Context of Place Identity
The results of the questionnaire in Bilbao appear to confirm the theoreticalconjecture, presented in Figure 2, about the ways in which built heritage andinnovative design may work as place identity generators. In post-modern,multi-ethnic and multi-cultural urban societies, innovative design of space canwork efficiently as a place identity generator in the same ways in which builtheritage has been performing highly in modern—culturally bounded and na-tion-state-oriented—European societies. There is also some evidence that incontemporary European societies, built heritage tends to get weaker whileinnovative design of space emerges as an effective new means of place identityby (1) adding or creating distinct urban landscape, (2) synchronizing spatially all
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Built Heritage and Innovative Design 243
the different social/cultural/economic groups; and (3) generating new socialsolidarities among inhabitants related to their common and/or individual econ-omic future.
To test whether the results in Bilbao have been strongly affected by thepresence of the Guggenheim Museum in the city, the effectiveness of innovativedesign as a place identity generator was tested again by an analogous question-naire survey in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece (see Hatziantoniou, 2003). UnlikeBilbao, Thessaloniki has no world-famous innovative design schemes like theGuggenheim Museum; the city missed a great chance to develop such buildingschemes during the preparation period for ‘Cultural Capital of Europe 1997’. Forthe purposes of the research, the questionnaire included two subcategories ofbuildings and public open spaces within the category of innovative design: (1)recently developed public buildings exhibiting new international design trends;and (2) the winning entries of international design competitions that took placeduring the city’s preparation for 1997 but which were never realized.15 Theresults of the questionnaire survey in Thessaloniki appear to reinforce those inBilbao. The choices made by all groups16 of interviewees indicate that both builtheritage schemes and innovative design schemes do work as place identitygenerators. As such, built heritage appears to prevail in the case of inhabitantswhile innovative design prevails in the case of tourists/visitors.
In the light of these results in Bilbao and Thessaloniki, the association ofplace identity and urban tourism development mainly with the preservation andenhancement of the city’s built heritage seems a conventional wisdom. In thepost-modern era, tourists and visitors seem equally, or even more, interested inseeking their own new experiences in the city’s innovative architectural andurban forms than in what has been selected to be preserved and exhibited asbuilt heritage.
In the global–local interplay, urban sociologists often assume that whereasthe economy is increasingly becoming global, cities and local communities canaddress the forces of globalization by defending their local culture and heritage.The results in Bilbao show the opposite. Inhabitants appear to be ‘indigenizing’global cultural flows—and in this case, global design trends. This trend, accord-ing to McNeill (2000), can be interpreted in relation to the identity crisis of citiesand nation-states and the strengthening of regionalism within the EU. He arguesthat for the Basques the Guggenheim Museum acts as a totem, a spatial fix of thepreferred new Basque identity—�a statement that the Basque identity is at homein the contemporary world rather than being mired in pre-modern ethnicbloodshed” (McNeill, 2000, p. 10). In the context of the global (unified) urbansystem of Europe, all such flagship design projects—what he calls the ‘McGug-genization’ process—that have been recently developed in many large cities inthe periphery (geographical and/or economic) of Europe, such as Barcelona,Lisbon, Cardiff and Edinburgh, and are intended to create new urban landscapeand new service sector economies, can tell us much about the desired regionalidentities and how the reterritorialization of Europe is being played out (Mc-Neill, 2000).
Regarding the outcome of the research in the context of European inte-gration, it may be suggested that design policies and strategies—drawn by localgovernments, central governments and the EU—supporting innovative architec-tural and urban design would facilitate the process of integration in the Eu-ropean cities into a global (unified) urban network and would do this in threeways.
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• In terms of urban landscape and morphology, such policies and strategieswould contribute to an iconography of integration, since innovative designschemes may add to the internationalization of local urban landscapes whileat the same time they—as place identity generators—may complement andnot replace local, regional and national identities. In other words, they mayproduce ‘glocalized’ urban landscapes (Beriatos & Gospodini, 2004) or land-scapes that Massey (1999) and Jacobs (1996) describe as a combination of ‘amixture through history’ and ‘a focus of a wider geography’, i.e. a landscapethat simultaneously expresses both the specificity of place as well as the linkswith the world beyond.
• In terms of new urban economies, such policies and strategies would contrib-ute to the convergence of local urban economies since innovative designschemes may add to the competitive edge of cities and promote economic—es-pecially tourism—development (see Gospodini, 2001, 2002).
• In relation to contemporary European urban societies, such policies andstrategies would contribute to social cohesion and the consolidation of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies since innovative design schemes can syn-chronize in space different social/cultural/economic groups and generate newsocial solidarities through space.
Notes
1. Among all EU programmes concerning built heritage, the most important ones in terms ofinvestment are the programmes launched by General Directorate X: (1) Pilot Projects (1983–95),aiming at introducing new techniques in the conservation of monuments; (2) Flagship Projects(1983–91), aiming at the conservation of major historical monuments; (3) Raphael (1997–2000),aiming at the enhancement of built heritage, the creation of networks among cities fortrans-national cooperation and the promotion of innovative actions and techniques; (4) CulturalCapital of Europe (1984–), aiming at enhancing the variety of cultural and built heritage thatEuropean cities exhibit; and (5) Culture (2000–04), aiming at the creation of ‘laboratories’ for themanagement of cultural and built heritage. Besides these large programmes, there are alsosmaller programmes for built heritage (e.g. Urban Pilot Projects, CIED, URBAN, EuromedHeritage) that are integrated within different major EU actions and programs such as Com-munity Support Frameworks, Leader, Interrreg, Innovative Actions and others.
2. As ‘new urban economies’, McNeill & While (2001) present a fourfold typology: agglomerationeconomies, informational and knowledge-rich economies, technopoles and urban leisure econ-omies.
3. Examples are presented and described in detail in Tunbridge (1998), Graham (1998), Ashworth(1998) and Graham et al. (2000).
4. For instance, the European League of Historic Cities, the Walled Towns Friendship Circle andQuarters en Crise.
5. International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property.6. For instance, regarding the second half of the 20th century, the passage from the modern
movement to post-modernism in the late 1970s, and from post-modernism to deconstruction inthe early 1990s.
7. Among major design schemes by Frank O. Gehry, one should note the Frederick R. WiesmanMuseum, Minneapolis, USA (1990), the American Centre, Paris (1994), the Nationale-Nederlandeoffice building, Prague (1996) and, especially, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1998),and the new Guggenheim Museum, New York (2000–).
8. Among major avant-garde design schemes by Santiago Calatrava, one may refer to SondicaAirport, Bilbao (1991), the Opera House, Tenerife (1991), the Bach de Roca bridge, Barcelona(1984–87), Satolas Airport’s railway station, Lyon (1989–94), the Montjuic telecommunicationstower, Barcelona (1989–92), the Campo Volantin bridge, Bilbao (1990–97), the Alamillo bridge,Cartuja, Seville (1987–92), Trinity Footbridge, Manchester (1993–95), Oriente Railway Station,Lisbon (1993–98) and the Kuwait Exhibition Pavilion, Seville, World Expo (1991–92). Among hismost recent major works, one should note first, the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia (1991–),
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including the Hemispheric building accommodating the planetarium and cinema (1991) and the
Museum of Arts and Sciences (1991), and secondly, the Art Museum, Milwaukee, USA
(1994–2000).
9. For instance, Calatrava’s projects for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, for World Expo 1992 in
Seville and, recently, for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. In the case of Athens, Calatrava was
invited by the Organizing Committee of the 2004 Olympic Games to redesign the main Olympic
Stadium in the area of Marroussi as well as the surrounding public open spaces.
10. For instance, in the case of Bilbao, following the opening of the Guggenheim Museum, there has
been a substantial tourism increase supporting the city’s economic growth. This increase is
considered by Plaza (1999; 2000a, b) a direct effect of the Guggenheim Museum. According to
data drawn from the Basque Government’s Statistical Authority, the comparison between a time
period before the opening of the Guggenheim Museum (January 1994–September 1997) and a
time period after the opening of the Guggenheim Museum (October 1997–July 1999) shows that
the percentage of foreign travellers has increased by a significant 44.6% whereas the percentage
of overnight stays has also increased by a significant 30.8%. Of course, one cannot estimate how
long the positive effect of the Guggenheim Museum on tourism will last. As argued elsewhere
(see Lengkeek, 1995; Gospodini, 2001), all kinds of ‘counter-structures’, when incorporated into
established reality, lose their specific meaning and, then, the quest of tourists for counter-struc-
tures goes on in a search for new horizons (Lengkeek, 1995). In the case of innovative design of
space in particular, when avant-garde trends are established as common design practices, they
lose their pioneering character and, therefore, cannot work anymore as counter-structures to the
familiar morphologies (Gospodini, 2001).
11. Such a result might also indicate a trend concerning not only European cities but all post-indus-
trial, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural cities in developed countries such as, for instance, cities in
the USA. However, in order to argue this, further research is required, investigating the
relationships among national identity, place identity and built heritage.
12. The structure of the questionnaire survey (i.e. the questions addressed to the interviewers, the
categories of interviewed people) was discussed with Professor Taner Oc, University of Notting-
ham, UK, during the AESOP 2002 International Congress, 10–15 July, Volos, Greece. The author
would like to thank him for his very instructive comments and advice.
13. The author would like to thank Professor Beatrice Plaza, who has greatly contributed to this
research in various ways: translating the questionnaire into Spanish, providing me with students
to carry out interviews in Spanish and also conducting interviews in the Department of Applied
Economics, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao.
14. Codification was done according to the discipline of the architectural and/or urban design
artifact the answers referred to, i.e. the formal discipline or the spatial discipline or meaning.
15. Among the latter were Toyo Ito’s large-scale redesign of the city’s waterfront redevelopment,
Coop Himmelbau’s design scheme of urban sea transportation for the fifth pier, Enric Miralles’s
design scheme of urban sea transportation for the sixth pier and Reem Koolhas’s design scheme
of urban sea transportation for the seventh pier. Although the strategic plan of Thessaloniki set
up in 1994 to prepare the city as ‘Cultural Capital of Europe 1997’ had included these projects,
they were finally dropped, mainly due to the incapability of the city’s authorities to develop
them well in advance of the events of ‘Cultural Capital of Europe 1997’.
16. The categories of interviewees were the same as in Bilbao: inhabitants/low-income people,
inhabitants/middle and upper middle classes, inhabitants/educated people, tourists (foreign
people on short holidays) and long-stay visitors (foreign people working or studying in the city
for a few months or a year).
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