Understanding the Widening Bourgeois and Spanish Urban Hierarchy
The Widening Bourgeois
The widening bourgeois is a new space that meets the demands of urban growth of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, their ideas of order (in its orthogonal plane), health (paving, sewage, and green spaces), and profit.
The plot was in blocks with large open spaces occupied by gardens. The dominant land use was residential bourgeois.
The first extensions were made in Barcelona, designed by Cerdá (1859), and Madrid, by Castro (1860). Then it spread to other cities.
With the passage of time (20th century), the widening experienced changes:
- The building became verticalized, rising penthouses and apartment blocks (especially in the early 1960s).
- Land use began receiving tertiary functions.
- Finally, a split occurred between a residential area facing the bourgeoisie and an outsourced sector dominated by shops and offices. This outsourcing is particularly intense in the extensions of Madrid and Barcelona.
The Spanish Urban System or Spanish Urban Hierarchy
Spanish cities relate to their environment and with other cities, accounting for systems or districts. This hierarchical mode means that some cities have more influence than others.
Characteristics of the Urban System
Elements of the urban system include size, functions, area of influence, and urban hierarchy.
The cities of a system are characterized by their size and the functions they perform. According to their size, they exert influence over a wider or narrower area and take a hierarchical position in the urban system.
The Size of Cities
- The largest population size corresponds to fifteen metropolitan areas with over 500,000 inhabitants. Among them, Madrid’s metropolitan area ranks first in the system with more than three million inhabitants, followed by the metropolitan area of Barcelona, which constitutes a bipolar system. Here lie five agglomerations exceeding 800,000 inhabitants: Valencia, Seville, Bilbao, Malaga, and Astur City, along with eight more with over 500,000 (Zaragoza, Alicante, Elche, Bay of Cadiz, Murcia, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Granada, Vigo-Pontevedra-Villa Garcia de Arosa, and Palma de Mallorca).
- After them, there is a large number of cities with populations between 400,000 and 150,000 (medium cities).
The spatial distribution of cities by size is characterized by their location in the center of the peninsula, with the larger area being Madrid, surrounded by major urban areas located in the periphery, and a few urbanized interiors dominated by medium-sized and small cities.
Spanish Urban Hierarchy
a) Cities exceeding 200,000 to 250,000 inhabitants, provided they are not part of a metropolitan area (e.g., Móstoles, Leganés, Getafe, Hospitalet de Llobregat are not cities) have the most diversified and specialized functions and extensive areas of influence. Within them, there are three subcategories:
- National Cities: Madrid and Barcelona. Their area of influence is national and maintains relationships with other international cities, linking the Spanish urban system with the European and global.
- Metropolitan Regions: The metropolitan areas of Valencia, Seville, Bilbao, Malaga, and Zaragoza.
- Sub-Cities: Metropolitan areas such as Valladolid, Pamplona, Palma de Mallorca, Cadiz, and Granada, with populations between 200,000 and 500,000 inhabitants.
b) Cities with populations between 50,000 and 200,000 inhabitants are some members of the metropolitan areas.
c) Small towns have populations between 10,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, such as Astorga.
Urban Relations in the City System
The cities of an urban system are linked by economic flows (goods, capital, investment), people, and other factors (political, administrative, cultural, etc.). In the Spanish urban system, relations between these cities are characterized by the following features:
- Madrid maintains strong relations with all other cities and towns, especially with Barcelona.
- Barcelona has a generally weaker influence, although it is interested in the eastern mainland and Balearic Islands.
- The northeast quadrant is the area of greater integration, as its five main cities have strong relationships (Madrid-Barcelona-Valencia-Bilbao-Zaragoza).
- In the rest of the system, relations between cities are smaller and incomplete. Flows dominate the cities with rural areas or nearby towns. The area of greatest disconnect between cities is around Portugal, except for Galicia. In the central plains, there are large areas in the south that are disconnected, and the relations between the cities of Andalusia and the Levant are mild.