Understanding Urban Planning: Key Concepts and Definitions

Understanding Urban Planning: Key Concepts

Metropolitan Area: A large urban extension surrounding a major city, which covers several municipalities, among which there are significant economic and social relations.

Peri-urban or Suburban Area: An imprecise boundary zone where soils are mixed and rural lifestyles and the city coexist.

Old Town: The part of the city from its beginnings to the 19th-century industrialization.

City: A core population of over 10,000 people, characterized morphologically by its high density of buildings, dominated by high buildings and collective housing, which usually dominate economic activities of secondary and tertiary sectors, with a more dynamic culture and less traditional social relations and condition of the organization of the surrounding space by their influence.

Conurbation: A continuous urban area formed by the growth of two or more cities to come together, keeping each core independent.

Urban Site: A concrete space that sits on a city.

Urban Widening: Enlargement of the city beyond its pre-industrial walls.

Urban Structure: Division of the city in areas with characteristic morphology and functions.

Urban Plan: A large-scale map which reflects the building space and free space of a city.

Irregular Plan: A large-scale map that shows areas of a city with streets and squares irregular and without a defined structure.

Radio-centric Plan: A large-scale map that shows the surfaces of an organized city with streets radiating from a center, cut by others forming rings around the center.

Orthogonal Plan: A large-scale map that shows the surfaces of an organized city with streets intersecting at right angles.

Location: Position relative to a broad geographical area.

Urban Layout: Layout of buildings (closed or open).

Urbanization: Progressive concentration in urban centers of population, economic activity, and cultural innovations, as well as its dissemination in the environment.

General Plan: A document which contains the applicable municipal urban Spanish regulations of buildings and future actions, among others. Nowadays, after the Constitutional Court decision, planning powers are attributed exclusively to the Autonomous Communities.

The General Urban Plans were introduced by the Land Law of 1956. This provision, now repealed, provided the following classification of urban terrain:

1. Urban Land: One that is located in consolidated areas for building or has a range of urban services (access road, water supply and sewerage, and electricity supply).
2. Urban Reserve Land: Susceptible to urbanization through the respective partial plans.
3. Rural Land: The rest of the municipality.