The South European city - urban space and social movements. The production of urban space and the logics of urban growth: The cases of Madrid and Barcelona, 1950-1980

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The project examines phases and forms of urban development in Franco Spain. It deals with the two most important Spanish metropolises, Madrid and Barcelona, and analyzes specific characteristics and paths of the production of urban space in the new peripheries during the boom phase of Spanish urbanization from the 1950s up to the transition to democracy. The study is conceived as a contribution to urban history and contemporary Spanish history as well as a contribution to the debate concerning the ideal type of the European city. The state of the art of urban history and the history of urbanization of contemporary Spain is rather unsatisfactory. There are relatively few studies for 20th century Spain. In their majority, they refer to the decades of the Franco dictatorship and deal with problems of the transformation of urban space and society highlighting the repressive character of the regime as well as the political struggles of anti-Franco movements and organizations. By this way, Spanish cities appear to be different from European normalcy because of their supposed backwardness and marginal position. This study chooses a different approach, beyond predominant mono-dimensional political and social perspectives. It deals with central aspects of the social production of the city (Henri Lefebvre). Considering the cases of Madrid and Barcelona, it examines on the one hand the interrelationship of different actors in the production of the city as well as the interrelatedness between public control and auto-regulation. Particular attention will be paid to the relationship between social, economic and political factors for urban development. On the other hand, the project looks at the dialectical interaction between conceived and perceived urban space, especially with regard to the new urban peripheries. Furthermore, the issues of the production and perception of space in Spanish metropolises shall be integrated into a comparative perspective of the debates concerning a particular South European path of urbanization after 1945.