URBAN SPACES

GETTING STARTED: WHAT’S A CITY?

A place inhabited by over 10,000 people (INE criterion). That includes Andalusian villages and excludes small towns of northern regions.

With features predominantly manufacturing and services, not agricultural.

With a differentiated morphology in sectors or areas, each of which has a role and a kind of buildings and spaces.

With an area of influence which is served by the city (and communicated by road with it), larger or smaller depending on the size of the city.

URBANIZATION PROCESS

That began in Neolithic times, but throughout history we can distinguish two main stages:

PRE-INDUSTRIAL CITY INDUSTRIAL CITY

PRE-INDUSTRIAL CITY Until the Industrial Revolution, no more than 10% of the population lived in cities, and they would normally not exceed 5,000 or 10,000. Their functions were military (control of territory), administrative (seat of political power), economic (market) and religious (temple). Three periods: classical, medieval and modern.

PRE-INDUSTRIAL STAGE: THE CLASSIC CITY

In the ninth and eighth centuries BC., Phoenicians and Greeks established trading posts along the coasts of Hispania, but the Romanization will be responsible for the beginning of the urbanization process.

The Roman plane copies that of the Greek Hipodamos of Miletus (grid or checkerboard), moving from the camps of the legions to the Roman colonies (Barcelona, Zaragoza, Merida, Italica ...).

Two North-South axis (Cardo) and East-West (Decumanus Maximus) cut the grid, in the crossroads there is a forum, to which we must add other public spaces (theater, amphitheater, baths, temples, circus ...). A wall surrounds the city (Lugo).

LUGO

PRE-INDUSTRIAL STAGE: MEDIEVAL CITY

Muslims founded some new cities (Madrid), but usually took previous settlements (Toledo, Córdoba), whose strategic, administrative and commercial function were revitalized.

Their plane is a maze of streets around the bazaar and mosque. The old city (medina) is walled, sometimes the suburbs too.

Christian cities arise from the tenth century as defensive enclaves, walled around market square, or main square, where the cathedral and the city council are situated.

Some maintain the shape of the hill on which they settle (Vitoria), others extend linearly along the road protected by a castle (Burgos), others have emerged as a bridge control settlement (Miranda).

THE HISTORIC OLD SPANISH CITIESTHE HISTORIC OLD SPANISH CITIES HAVE NORMALLY MEDIEVAL ORIGIN. HAVE NORMALLY MEDIEVAL ORIGIN.

TOLEDO

MIRANDA DE EBRO

VITORIA-GASTEIZBURGOS

PRE-INDUSTRIAL STAGE: THE MODERN CITY During the modern age were not

created new towns on the peninsula, except those of the Bourbons to colonize Sierra Morena (La Carolina).

But the new star shaped walls are interesting in strategic cities (Pamplona, Ciudad Rodrigo, Palma).

The checkerboard map (blocks) was taken to the new American cities.

LA CAROLINA

PALMA’ WALLS

CIUDAD RODRIGO

BUENOS AIRES

INDUSTRIAL CITY

The Industrial Revolution will completely transform the cities from mid-nineteenth:

Textile and metallurgical factories attracted thousands of workers from the countryside.

The bourgeoisie abandoned the old town, unhealthy, uncomfortable, strangled by the walls, and constructed a new city (Ensanche). In the old town and in slums or shanty houses will be crowded the workers.

The new town will follow the plane grid, with wide spaces between buildings, gardens, wide streets and elegant homes, which connect the city with the railway station, the new transport system.

The division of the kingdom into provinces (1833) did also grow as new capitals cities where the industry came much later.

Urbanization was stronger during the 60s and 70s (development): development centers (polos de desarrollo), metropolitan areas, tourist towns ...

ALTOS HORNOS DE VIZCAYA (blast furnaces)

FIRST TRAIN BARCELONA-MATARÓ

SHANTY HOUSES (CASAS MOLINERAS) IN VALLADOLID

BARRI GÓTICAND RAVAL INBARCELONA

BARCELONA

I. Cerdá devised a widening plan for the new town (1855):wide open spaces that urban speculation was responsible for compacting. The chamfered corners ease traffic.

URBAN MORPHOLOGY AND STRUCTURE

The appearance or outward form of a city is influenced by: Its location (in flat or raised, by a river or harbour, in a

crossroads ...). The plane (Radiuscenter, checkerboard, labyrinth, star,

irregular). The layout of buildings (block open or closed), height and

construction materials (brick, stone, tile, slate, painted buildings or not ...).

The land use, that depend on functions having the city: commercial, residential, industrial, community facilities, cultural ...

It's called urban structure to the division of the city in areas with morphology (appearance) and characteristic functions:

OLD TOWN, CENTER OR DOWNTOWN (North America) NEW TOWN (ENSANCHE) OUTSKIRTS

EUROPEAN URBAN STRUCTURES

BILBAO

LEÓN

SAN SEBASTIÁN

URBAN LAND USE MODELS

BURGESS ZONE MODEL APPLIED TO CHICAGO

HOYT SECTOR MODEL APPLIED TO MADRID

OLD TOWNCáceres

Bilbao

Salamanca

CITY CENTER IN AMERICANMODEL (DOWNTOWN)

Chicago

BOURGEOIS NEW TOWN

Barcelona

Madrid

MADRID AND BARCELONA CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICTS

Azca

La Diagonal

DIFFERENT MODELS OF NEW TOWN:LINEAR CITY

ZaragozaBarcelona

OUTSKIRTS:NEIGHBORHOODS

MADRID SUBURBS, 60-70’s

Pozo del Tío Raimundo

El Pilar

Cuatro Torres Business Área (Madrid)

OUTSKIRTS: NEW C.B.D.

INDUSTRIAL OUTSKIRTS:Industrial estates, ring roads,

harbour areas

Vigo

OUTSKIRTS: Private estates, semidetached houses and garden city

Ayamonte

Córdoba (Arg.)

OUTSKIRTS SHANTYTOWNS: Cañada Real Galiana in Madrid

OUTSKIRTS:Rural-urban services

Hospital (Córdoba)

Wholesale market (Alicante)

Greenhouses

URBAN EXPANSION

The extent of urban lifestyles and spaces occupied by the cities has brought to large urbanized areas, with different structure:

Metropolitan areas (Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Sevilla) organized around a large city with several satellite cities linked by a dense infrastructure network. The big city concentrates the more valuable tertiary and the area supports different uses of industrial, residential land or services.

Conurbation, or spatial union of cities with a similar size (east coast of Guipuzcoa, Costa del Sol, Algeciras Bay).

Urban area, diffuse conurbation in which cities fail to bind spatially (Central Asturias).

Madrid southern metropolitan area

URBAN PROBLEMS

1. Housing (deterioration and derelict areas in the old town, land prices, real estate speculation).

Water and light supplies, equipment (hospitals, cultural and sporting centers, parks), that are deficient in the neighborhoods.

Traffic and public transport.

Air pollution, noise, sewage, household garbage and industrial waste.

Slums and crime, shantytowns, overcrowding (more in LEDC cities).

THESE PROBLEMS TO BE SETTLED

BY THE LAND USE AND URBAN PLANNING, every city must have a General Urban Plan (PGOU) AS A GUIDE FOR GROWTH.

URBAN SYSTEM

It consists of a network of interconnected cities.

Every city has a size and a number of functions within the system, occupying a place in the urban hierarchy.

City centers exert their influence over an area more or less extensive.

RANK-SIZE RULE In well-integrated systems of

cities, it is a constant relationship between the size of settlements and their rank. All settlements in a region are in descending order of population or size from the largest settlement. The second settlement is expected to be half the size of the first settlement, and the fifth largest settlement is a fifth of the first, as well with others.

Concave deviation: strong predominance of the larger settlement (the capital) for political or economic reasons: the Spanish case.

Convex deviation: poorly integrated system.

In our case, the second settlement (Barcelona) is much greater than that generally corresponds to the second city.

SPANISH URBAN SYSTEM

Is peripheral, despite the centrality of Madrid and its radial connections, partly because the inland demographic vacuum and the layout of the mountains.

Predominance of intermediate and small towns, no large conurbations (Bay of Cadiz and Algeciras, in central Asturias, Guipuzcoa coast, Costa del Sol), the largest are metropolitan areas (Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao, Malaga and Zaragoza).

No major inner axis around which to focus the nuclei, except the Ebro and the Guadalquivir. The highway of Castile is very new.

The larger the settlements, the more features and greater complexity they have.

ROLE OF THE CITIES IN THE SYSTEM

Some are linked to the primary sector: coalfields of Asturias and Leon, Andalusian ruraltowns (oil), La Mancha and La Rioja (wineries), Levante and Murcia (horticulture).

There are cities with clearly industrial functions (Basque Country, Catalonia, Asturias, Navarra, Madrid metropolitan area).

Finally, major national cities (Madrid, Barcelona) specialize in business services, administrative or cultural. In the provincial capitals with little industry, services also tend to predominate, and there are some cities that specialize in certain types of tertiary activities: ports (Vigo, Algeciras, Las Palmas), tourism (Benidorm, Marbella), universities (Salamanca), etc.

THE AREA OF INFLUENCE

AND URBAN HIERARCHY

Cities supply of goods and services to an area more or less extensive, depending on their size and what are their specialized functions.

The German geographer Christaller (1933) tried to implement a theoretical model of what would be a balanced system of nuclei, but urban areas are never as homogeneous: relief, borders or roads prevent it.