Urban Planning System in Contemporary Spain

Abstract

This work analyses the main Spanish legislative and urban planning instruments, highlighting some of the most important structural problems of the current Spanish urban realities. The survey on legislation runs from the first Land Use Act of 1956 to the decentralization of the administration and the culmination of the transfer processes to the respective Spanish regions. Later, we study the complete well-structured hierarchy of urban planning instruments in use at present. Finally, we analyse how these and other factors have an influence on the capacity to control housing prices and on a lack of sustainability characterized by the excessive urbanizing use of the land.

Acknowledgement

This paper is a result of the research financed by the project “Tourist functionalization of the Balearic Islands (1955–2000): territorial adaption and ecological cirsis of the archipelago” (SEJ2006-07256/GEOG) from the General Direction of Research (Spanish Ministry of Education and Science).

Notes

1. It is interesting to see how Finland, one of the countries with a lesser population density in Europe, has introduced important mechanisms for the reduction of residential expansion in their building act of 1994, which represents a clear example of sustainability.

2. The increase of loans has been notable since 1992. The average yearly variation index for the period 1992–2000 was kept in a high 18.4%. One of the consequences is families falling into debts in order to buy living quarters, which has gone from 43% of the total of their available gross rent in 1996 to 87% in 2003. In this falling-into-debt context, the most important advance in available housing has taken place.

3. These and other contradictions between offer and demand of housing is not exclusive to Spain, and they have also been perfectly identified in Europe (Trilla, 2001).

4. More available land is equal to more living quarters, which will result in a decrease of the final product.

5. Amongst other issues, it is necessary to highlight the weak effort of the Spanish public administrations to produce public or granted housing. In 1993, the total of protected housing started in Spain reached the ridiculous figure of 54,205. But mainly since 1996, when the era of the biggest effort to liberalize the land was commenced, the tendency started decreasing until reaching 44,014 in 2002. The last data of 2003 reached 71,720.

6. The Autonomous Community of Madrid has the highest level of urban land: 10.60%.

7. The Autonomous Community of Madrid increased its urbanized areas to 49.23% between 1990 and 2000.