Land Squandering and Social Crisis in the Spanish City

• Main Author: González Pérez, Jesús (auth)
• Other Authors: Piñeira-Mantiñán, María José (auth), Cebrián-Abellán, Francisco (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2019
• Subjects: residential strategies; Cabanyal; urban sustainability; foreign immigration; eco-neighborhood; neoliberal urban policy; suburbanization; urban growth; housing vulnerability; foreclosure; spatial analysis; housing market; counter-urbanization; urban sprawl; Alicante; educational level; rurbanization; post-crisis; Suomi NPP VIIRS; urban regeneration; urban segregation; Spanish city; holiday home; Barcelona; vulnerable neighborhoods; real estate bubble; remote sensing; night lights; illegal urbanization; urban inequality; urbanization; water; sharing economies; Uber; land squandering; socio-environmental vulnerability; Madrid; financialization; housing bubble; Extremadura; urban conflicts; urbanism; social housing; residential segregation; Airbnb; dispersed urbanism; urban geography; social-vulnerability; medium-sized city; school choice; eviction; urban vulnerability; social crisis; sustainable urban neighborhoods; periurbanization; periphery; land uses; qualitative methodology; expansive city planning; residential mobility; consumption; Spain; urbanization process; economic crisis; medium-size cities; neighbourhood effect; social inequalities; urban expansion; Barcelona Metropolitan Region; seasonality; Valencia
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

The last two decades have been marked by intense and accelerated economic, political, and cultural processes that have affected urban spaces. These changes have occurred in different parts of cities (traditional centers, edges, peripheries) and at different levels of the urban system (large and medium-sized cities and in their respective areas of influence). Possibly the clearest expression of the spatial effects on cities can be perceived in their morphological transformations, their territorial dimensions, or in their social problems. Until 2008, urban-territorial processes were a reflection of the logic and inconsistencies of an expansive economic context and of a structural context that favored the development of cities through concurrent processes and actors. As a result, the built land and amount of urbanized and built surfaces increased, together with processes of the expansion and modernization of cities. Since 2008, the expansive economic cycle has ended, and there have been diverse negative consequences. Notably, the construction sector has come to an abrupt halt. Access to credit has also been reduced, and unemployment has increased. The economic recession has caused sociodemographic and socioeconomic issues exemplified by housing vulnerability, with dispossession, evictions, a shortage of social housing, and energy poverty.