Repolarization of the Mediterranean: Spanish and Greek cities in neo‐liberal Europe

Abstract

The re‐emergence of East/West polarization in the Mediterranean is explored here in the context of the intensification of urban competition and place marketing in neo‐liberal Europe. Spanish urban success stories during the 1990s, relying on urban‐oriented civic pride, local initiative and international events contrast sharply with Greek urban experiences, blocked by formidable objective and inter‐subjective obstacles to development. The 1960s and the 1990s were periods of Mediterranean convergence and divergence respectively. Cities have developed in a context of informality and reciprocity in both countries, but the ‘modernization’ effort since the mid‐1970s created contrasts in policy, planning and local initiative. These were later combined with dramatic global geopolitical change, with the redistribution of real income at the European scale to the advantage of core regions, and with the persistence of certain biases of European Union policy. In all contrasts and contradictions discussed here (urban success and productivity versus regional and urban depolarization, market competition versus reciprocity, urbanism versus nationalism), Spain and Greece present opposite trajectories. Local cultures are influenced by, but also have an impact on global developments in Europe. This dialectic interrelation has led to sustainable development in Spain, while the policy, economic and political contexts are not particularly promising for urban regeneration in Eastern Mediterranean.