Urban Change in the Iberian Peninsula

The book addresses the situation of the urban world in Spain and Portugal in the first quarter of the 21st century. Cities and metropolitan areas have become the key to understanding the organization of the territory and the economic system in the Iberian Peninsula. Iberian cities drive financial-based business, and they constitute the main centers of commerce and tourism, since urban and economic organization are presented as two directly related variables. This reality is defined by the primacy of three main cities (Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon), followed by six metropolitan areas with around one or two million inhabitants (Porto, Bilbao, Zaragoza, Valencia, Seville, and Malaga). As in the large capitals, problems of income inequality and access to housing, mobility, and government also affect the remaining regional urban systems.

This book examines these urban areas through six major themes, which are developed in more than 25 chapters. The themes are urbanization, inequality, finance and housing markets, consumers and new residents, mobility, and governance. Contributions from leading geographers and urban planners from the most important universities of the Iberian Peninsula comprise this overview of metropolitan areas of Spain and Portugal.

Chapter "Territorial Governance and Soft Planning in the Region of Lisbon" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4. 0 International License via Springerlink.

Introduction. - Part 1: Urbanization. - Population change, migration and mobility patterns in Portugal. - Regional concentration and urban expansion in Spain. Fragmentation and intra-urban inequality. - Urbanization and territorial change in Portugal. - The road to extended urbanization in Spain. - Part 2: Inequality. - The contemporary geographies of urban inequality: Insights from Portugal and the Lisbon metropolitan area. - The construction of residential exclusion in Madrid and its metropolitan area. - Gender (in)sensitive cities? Progress and setbacks in Portugal. - The segregation of the Nouveau Riche: A metropolitan issue. The case of a Coruña. - Part 3: Finance and real estate. - Housing, real estate and the economy in Portuguese cities. - The city building business in Spain. - Platform economy and uneven financial geographies: The case of Fintech in Portugal. - The economic and financial capitals of Spain: Their significance in the structuring of the urban system. - Part 4: Consumers and new residents. - Consumer culture and the fashion retail in the city of Lisbon: Avenida Da Liberdade as stage and theatre. - The image and the branding of the Spanish city. - The triumph of floating residents in the neoliberal city. - Madrid: A city for consumption and investment. - Part 5: Mobility. - The end of the car city in Portugal. - The end of the car city in Spain. - Active mobility in Portugal: The case of Lisbon. - New forms of mobility: The case of Madrid. - Part 6: Governance. - Urban governance and public policies in Portugal. - Governance and urbanism: The search for a better city challenges and recent advances in Spain. - Territorial governance and soft planning in the region of Lisbon. - Decentralization and governance in Portugal. - Governance and urbanism in the revitalization of the City centre of Albacete. - The power of neighborhoods. Bottom-up governance and urban planning in a working-class district of Barcelona, Nou Barris.