Urban Expansion and Problems: Land Use and Urban Planning

The extent of urban lifestyle and spaces occupied by the cities has led to large urbanized areas. Metropolitan areas are organized around a large city. The big city concentrates the more valuable tertiary and the area supports different uses of industrial, residential, and services. Conurbation is the spatial union of cities with a similar size. Urban area is a diffuse conurbation in which cities fail to bind spatially.

Urban problems include housing, water and light supplies, equipment that are deficient in the neighborhoods, traffic and public transport, air pollution, noise, sewage, household garbage, and industrial waste, slums and crime, shantytowns, overcrowding. These problems can be addressed through land use and urban planning. Every city must have a General Urban Plan (PGOU) as a guide for growth.

Urban System

The urban system consists of a network of interconnected cities. Every city has a size and a number of functions within the system, occupying a place in the urban hierarchy. City centers exert their influence over an area more or less extensive.

Rank-size rules describe the constant relationship between the size of settlements and their rank in well-integrated systems of cities. All settlements in a region are in descending order of population. The second settlement is expected to be half the size of the first settlement. Concave deviation refers to the strong predominance of the larger settlement for political or economic reasons, while convex deviation indicates a poorly integrated system. In our case, the second settlement is much greater than generally corresponds to the second city.

Spanish Urban System

The Spanish urban system is peripheral, despite the centrality of Madrid and its radial connections. There is a predominance of intermediate and small towns, with no large conurbations. The largest urban areas are metropolitan areas. There is no major inner axis around which to focus the nuclei, except the Ebro and the Guadalquivir. The larger the settlements, the more features and greater complexity they have.

Role of the Cities in the System

Some cities are linked to the primary sector, such as the coalfields of Asturias and Leon, Andalusian rural towns (oil), La Mancha and La Rioja (wineries), Levante and Murcia (horticulture). There are cities with clearly industrial functions. Finally, major national cities like Madrid and Barcelona specialize in business services, administrative or cultural. In the provincial capitals, services also tend to predominate.

The Area of Influence and Urban Hierarchy

Cities supply goods and services to an area more or less extensive. The German geographer Christaller (1933) tried to implement a theoretical model of what would be a balanced system of nuclei.