Metropolitan dynamic in the spanish urban system. Two decades of cyclical context and crisis.

Abstract

This contribution provides conceptual and empirical references to understand of the growth and crises process of the Spanish metropolitan system. For that purpose, the chapter presents an analysis focused on the metropolitan areas over 500.000 inhabitants, dealing with the two basic dimensions of urban growth during the first decades of the present century. The first dimension focuses on the trajectories of urban development as measured by remote sensing data on land cover. The second dimension focuses on demographic change and the related processes of immigration and suburbanization, which is a dimension that permits, in a relatively simple way, the description and interpretation of metropolitan dynamics. Moreover, the chapter includes an initial assessment of the direct and indirect impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on metropolitan dynamics, describing how the “epidemic” interrupted the cycle of economic recovery. The results show the structural and systemic character of demographic growth and the process of urbanization in the Spanish metropolitan areas. The chapter closes posing several insights about the intensity and cyclic character of this urban growth and the impact of the pandemic, with a number of novel factors which have influenced the behaviour of the metropolitan system.