Social Effects of Crisis Residential Mobility and Urban Sprawl in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (Spain)

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (MRB) has been undergoing enormous changes. Residential strategies have directly been aff ected by diverse economic crises and several factors such as employment, purchasing power, borrowing capacity infl uencing housing access, and the housing market. This is particularly true for the present crisis as the Spanish GDP is based on tourism and the construction industries. This context has infl uenced social groups in various ways, generating new vulnerabilities and inequalities, and, hence, unfolding a new residential map. Probably the period’s greatest change has been the development of the disperse city due to housing estate growth. Therefore, a new landscape has appeared. Even though the analyzed period starts and ends with two significant economic crises, between both, Spain underwent an economic prosperity period that aff ected residential strategies. The late 1980s crisis—deriving from the 1970s oil crisis—cleared the way for urban out-migration to housing estates. Spain underwent a real estate boom that has particularly led middle classes, but not only them, to change residential strategies. This process is especially visible in the MRB. Immoderate property price increases together with a policy of readily available mortgage credits contributed to a residential model change. Middle classes left large cities that were too expensive and that off ered them scarcely adapted homes to their new needs. Young couples, with or without children, chose to move to the new growing market of housing estates in urban sprawl areas, consolidating an urban model where the traditional Mediterranean compact city co-exists with low-density dispersed housing estates.