Urban spaces

URBAN SPACES
Geography and History Department
I.E.S. FRAY PEDRO DE URBINA
Miranda de Ebro

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
 We know (?), 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, Phoenicians founded Gadir
not more than 10% of the
population lived in cities, and
they will normally not exceed
5,000 or 10,000. His 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 TOLEDO
 Muslims founded some new cities
(Madrid), but usually took previous
settlements (Toledo, Córdoba), whose
strategic, administrative and
commercial function 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, FRÍAS
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 CITIES
HAVE NORMALLY MEDIEVAL ORIGIN.

MIRANDA DE EBRO

VITORIA-GASTEIZ

BURGOS

PRE-INDUSTRIAL STAGE: THE MODERN CITY
 During the modern age were not LA CAROLINA
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.
PALMA’ WALLS

CIUDAD RODRIGO

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 ALTOS HORNOS DE VIZCAYA (blast furnaces)
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 60
and 70 (development): development centers
(polos de desarrollo), metropolitan areas,
tourist towns ...

FIRST TRAIN BARCELONA-MATARÓ

TEXTILE INDUSTRY IN TARRASA

“CIUDADELAS” IN GIJÓN
BARRI GÓTIC
AND RAVAL IN
BARCELONA

SHANTY HOUSES (CASAS MOLINERAS) IN VALLADOLID

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

URBAN LAND USE MODELS
HOYT SECTOR MODEL APPLIED TO MADRID

BURGESS ZONE MODEL APPLIED TO CHICAGO

Cáceres
OLD TOWN

Salamanca

Bilbao

CITY CENTER IN AMERICAN
MODEL (DOWNTOWN)

Chicago

San Francisco

BOURGEOIS NEW TOWN

Barcelona

Madrid

Portugalete

Azca

La Diagonal

MADRID AND BARCELONA CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICTS

DIFFERENT MODELS OF NEW TOWN:
LINEAR CITY

Huelva

Santa Cruz de Tenerife
Valladolid

Barcelona

OUTSKIRTS:
NEIGHBORHOODS
Zaragoza

MADRID SUBURBS, 60-70’s

Pozo del Tío Raimundo

El Pilar

OUTSKIRTS: NEW C.B.D.

Cuatro Torres Business Área (Madrid)

La Défense (Paris)

INDUSTRIAL OUTSKIRTS:
Industrial estates, ring roads,
harbour areas

Vigo

Ayamonte

Bilbao

Córdoba (Arg.)

OUTSKIRTS:
Private estates, semidetached houses and garden city

OUTSKIRTS SHANTYTOWNS:
Cañada Real Galiana in Madrid

Wholesale market (Alicante)

Shopping center (Bogotá)
OUTSKIRTS:
Rural-urban services

Greenhouses

Hospital (Córdoba)

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 Madrid southern metropolitan area
(Central Asturias).

URBAN PROBLEMS
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.
 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.


Urban spaces

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