ABSTRACT
Investigating metropolitan planning in Madrid has yielded insights that, because of the nature of its planning institution, often are obscured in the analyses of institutions that do not have professionals skilled at creating and using designs and images. The achievement of Madrid's planners is that they created images of the city and the metro area and employed them with perspicacity for many purposes, in addition to their customary use to shape urban development. They led the entire metropolitan planning institution and not just its principal actors in its use of images to shape not only metro plans and not only urban form but political strategy and institutional outcomes as well. At times governing growth resembles a metropolitan medusa. In other cases metropolitan or regional government does exist. Even then, control over growth is scattered. These intermediate levels do not always exercise jurisdiction over key development factors.
