Urban Development in Spain: 19th and 20th Centuries
**Urban Dwelling**
Currently, a core city population is considered, taking into account several aspects:
- Population Criteria: There are three categories of municipalities in Spain: urban municipalities, intermediate municipalities, and rural municipalities.
- Functional Criteria: The city is that locality focusing primarily on industrial and service activities.
- Spatial Continuity Criteria: The city is the reality that expands on the territory in a massive and seamless way.
- Morphological Criteria: The city is defined by a series of buildings with larger than rural public spaces that are more orderly, and differential treatment is given to rural and natural elements, which have meaning and look very different from when they are in undeveloped areas.
- Area Criteria: Urban areas have a projection and influence beyond their borders.
- Cultural Criteria: This culture is characterized by accelerated life patterns, for the sake of change, for consumption, and for different ways of thinking about leisure and social relations.
**Spanish Towns During the 19th and 20th Centuries: General Overview**
Some of the keys to this new city are:
- The production of urban land will become a business and an economic engine whose importance in the city is kept current and also led to land speculation. The sale releases a lot of space in cities, which is sometimes used to make new places or public buildings, but in others, it is sold and converted into housing.
- There is a significant development of factories and industries, and with them, new and improvised working-class neighborhoods.
- The growth of many cities and the incidence of several deadly epidemics caused much concern for improving the quality of life. Projects were established that determined the ideal width every street in the city should have. Another important aspect of this concern for hygiene and health is the construction of extramural cemeteries.
- The demolition of the walls was one of the major impacts on the image and perception of many Spanish cities.
- The arrival of the railroad was another turning point. The nineteenth century was a century of great change in communications. The railroads not only brought the cities together but also organized important extramural sectors due to the great need for land they required.
- New standards and spaces are developing in the city. As a result of the above, a number of facilities and equipment emerged that will give a new image to the city.
**Physical Transformation of the Spanish City from the Middle of the 19th Century**
Changes in the Spanish city are evident in three areas: internal reform or enlargement (historic center), the construction of extensions, and the formation of the first suburbs.
Internal Reform (or Ensanche)
In the late nineteenth century, many Spanish cities began urban planning policies. Thus, the great avenues and other roads arose that were intended to sanitize the old historic centers, improving accessibility and social control, as well as creating new and better residential and commercial areas. With the opening of the streets, two processes began that have remained in force in the evolution of the Spanish city since then: urban segregation and gentrification.
- Urban segregation is a process whereby more modest inhabitants are forced to occupy poorer neighborhoods, while the upper classes took the best.
- Gentrification is the replacement of the inhabitants of a neighborhood by others with a higher social status.
Despite the processes described, the humble working population remained abundant in the historic centers.
Extensions (Ensanches)
New neighborhoods were planned in the nineteenth century around the center. Given the need for expansion of many Spanish cities, the walls were demolished, which allowed building beyond the center. The extensions of Barcelona (planned by Ildefonso Cerdà) and Madrid (planned by Carlos María de Castro) are the first projects that were put into operation. The structure of the extensions tended towards geometric forms, especially the grid plan. The uses of the extensions were varied, although they were more so during the first decades: they were bourgeois and they had several commercial areas, but also industrial areas. With the advance of the twentieth century and the centrality that these areas have gained as cities grow, the extensions have been socially gentrified, and spaces with a strong introduction of services have shifted mainly to industry and modest classes.
The Emergence of the Suburbs
In the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a new urban space: the outskirts and suburbs.
- We must take into account the inability of traditional institutions and extensions to meet all the demands of urban land.
- The scarcity, which acquires land for extensions, causes many industrial activities to be located in peripheral areas, which are cheaper.
What were the physical characteristics? The suburbs are characterized by a mixture of agricultural uses with urban uses.
- Marginal or substandard housing is located in poorly monitored areas.
- Industry moves to the suburbs because there is less control, the price of land is lower, and it is located close to the core of workers.
- Garden cities were areas composed of villas surrounded by gardens, which are usually occupied by high social strata.
- Affordable housing: Homes were modest, sometimes with small gardens.
Arturo Soria’s Linear City
One of the main proposals for the outskirts of Madrid was that of the engineer Arturo Soria, author of the Linear City project. Arturo Soria intended to ruralize the city and urbanize the countryside. It takes the form of an elongated city that expands through a communications hub and houses. Only a segment that should surround Madrid was built.