The publication contains six sections, each with introductions from a professional of recognised prestige, as follows:
1) Territorial structure, introduced by Florencio Zoido Naranjo, Professor of Geographical Diversity in Seville.
2) The population, introduced by Juan Antonio Módenes, Lecturer in Geography at the Regional University in Barcelona.
3) Housing, introduced by the economist Julio Rodríguez.
4) Homes, introduced by Jesús Leal Maldonado, Professor of Sociology at the Complutense University, Madrid.
5) Town planning, introduced by Luciano Parejo Alfonso, Professor of Administrative Law at the Carlos III University, Madrid, and Rector of the Menéndez Pelayo International University.
Each section is preceded by an aerial photograph of the area under study and a map of land uses obtained from Corine Land Cover, 2000.
The statistical basis for the study is:
Population and Housing Census 2001.
Municipal Register of Residents on 1 January 2003.
Housing prices statistics from the Ministry of Housing

- Spain has no general delimitation of urban metropolitan areas. Only some regions have started procedures of this type and with different methods and objectives.
The setting up of the Ministry of Housing and of the Urban Information System (SIU) has allowed this work to be undertaken

- The prior criteria were the consideration that for the large urban areas there must be a central municipality with at least 50,000 residents and that the municipalities in the area had at least 1,000 residents.
For small urban areas, two layers were considered: towns with 20,000 to 50,000 residents and those with 10,000 to 20,000, although a series of filters was applied to this layer. In total, 1,012 urban municipalities were included, of which 743 were large urban areas and 269 were small urban areas.

1. In Spain there are 82 Large Urban Areas and 269 small urban areas, that is, 79% of the population and 78% of main houses are concentrated in 12% of Spanish municipalities occupying 19% of the country’s area.
2. Over half of the Spanish population lives in a municipality other than that in which it was born. This datum is especially important in the large urban areas.
3. The phenomenon of immigration has been really spectacular in the last few years. In 1996 this population formed 5% of the total and in 2003, 15%. It has tripled in seven years.
4. The number of houses has gown by 22% in ten years, with secondary and empty houses growing the most (28% and 40%, respectively, compared to 20% for main houses).
5. Spanish homes have grown strongly. While the population grew by 3% between 1991 and 2001, homes increased by 20% in the same period. The growth of single-person homes is notable, from 13% in 1991 to 20% in 2001. Also notable is the increase of single-parent homes headed by women, growing from 9% in 1991 to 11% in 2001. These homes form 12% of family homes in the large urban areas.
6. The democratic councils have carried out important work in the area of town planning.
In 1977, 26% of municipalities had some type of town planning regulations; in 2004, 76% of municipalities had town planning regulations, 100% for those in urban areas.

General Direction of Urban Planning and Land Policy, Ministry of Housing.
Paseo de la Castellana, 112
28071 MADRID
Spain
Phone: (+34) 91 728 4091
jlnicolas@vivienda.es
http://www.vivienda.es
Mr José Luis Nicolás Rodrigo

01/09/2005

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General Direction of Urban Planning and Land Policy

research

Urban Policy > Urban environment

Land use