The Road to Extended Urbanization in Spain

In recent decades, the urbanization process in Spain has undergone very notable transformations. For historical reasons, Spain is a country in which the contemporary urbanization process suffered a certain delay compared to other European countries. Thus, the process of concentration of population and activity on the territory, typical of the implosive phase of the urbanization process, reached its peak in the mid-seventies of the twentieth century. Since then, urbanization has been characterized by the expansion of urban areas, the integration of space and the extension of built areas. This has led to the assertion of preeminence over the entire urban system of the main metropolitan areas: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, Seville, Malaga and Zaragoza. At the same time, it has caused notable problems of land artificialization, exacerbation of mobility, residential segregation and metropolitan governance.