Governance and Urbanism: The Search for a Better City Challenges and Recent Advances in Spain

The chapter intends to review the major stages of urban local government in Spain since the mid-twentieth century. In the first place, the city apparently regulated by General Municipal Planning Plans, which had to specify which new sectors were reserved for urbanization, to channel the growth of the nucleus, as well as which were left aside in the following years, has been surpassed. The government based on plans solved the housing problem in the main cities, even if it was at the cost of a certain precariousness of urban planning in public spaces or in endowments for the community. In addition, it reinforced for a long time the vertical and compact city model, positive in some aspects, but which has been associated with chronic congestion problems. With the economic and real estate crisis that began in 2008, largely the result of a speculative bubble, the rate of expansion of cities and urban spaces has slowed drastically. The General Plans lose many of their functions and, on occasions, are blocked by judicial resolutions that prevent their execution. For these reasons, and secondly, a new stage of urban governance has opened, which calls for participation and sustainability. This model is still in the process of being defined, although the Urban Agendas or sustainable urban development strategies, supported by the European Union, can show us some aspects of the future of real city governance in the coming period.