Land Squandering in the Spanish Medium Sized Cities: The Case of Toledo

A process of land squandering began in Spain in the mid 1990s until the great crisis of 2008. The intensive production of urban land affected the Spanish medium-sized towns. They were characterized by their compact nature and then they underwent an intense diffuse urbanization. However, in some case...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Irene Sánchez Ondoño, Luis Alfonso Escudero Gómez
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2019-01-01
Series:Urban Science
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/3/1/16
Description
Summary:A process of land squandering began in Spain in the mid 1990s until the great crisis of 2008. The intensive production of urban land affected the Spanish medium-sized towns. They were characterized by their compact nature and then they underwent an intense diffuse urbanization. However, in some cases there had been previous examples of urban sprawl. In this article, we study one of them, the unique and historic city of Toledo, in the Centre of the Iberian Peninsula. We will show how the city has experienced the land squandering and has been extensively widespread throughout the hinterland, consisting of their peripheral municipalities. We will also check how Toledo has had a previous internal dispersion process in the last quarter of the 20th Century through the called <i>Ensanche</i> (widening). We will use the urban estate cadaster as a fundamental source for evolutionary and present analysis of the city and its hinterland. The field and bibliographic work complete the methodology. The final conclusion is that there have been remarkable urban increments in Spanish medium-sized cities such as Toledo, in external and peripheral districts, under the logic of speculation and profit, resulting in a disjointed space.
ISSN:2413-8851