ABSTRACT
If we take the urban area of Barcelona as an example, in the past few decades almost as much land has been urbanized as in the preceding two millennia. In 1957, some 10,000 hectares had been urbanized; in 1972 this had grown to 20,000; in 1986 to some 40,000, in 1992 around 46,700 and two years later the area of urbanized land stood at about 50,000 hectares (Acebillo and Folch 2000). The rate of growth might have slowed down a little, but still each year an area greater than the whole of Barcelona’s nineteenth-century plan of expansion (L’Eixample), a project designed in 1859 by Ildefons Cerdà, is urbanized (Rueda 1995; Rueda et al. 1998). Unlike other periods in history,
this urban growth is directly residential in nature. It is totally unconnected with the location of new economic activities that attract residents. Neither does it have anything to do with demographic growth. In one of the regions with the lowest birth rates in the world, the population has remained stagnant at 4.25 million for over 20 years.
