https://especiales.eldiario.es/spain-lives-in-flats/ logo By Raul Sanchez and Analia Plaza Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically --------------------------------------------------------------------- A project of elDiario.es, with data from the Spanish Cadastre scroll Scroll to see the content facebook twitter logo Become a member facebook twitter This is the Torre Hercon (Hercon Tower) in A Coruna. It has 31 floors, 24 of which are dwelling units. It was inaugurated in 1975 and is the tallest building in Galicia[?] It was developed by a publicly 'protected' (subsidised) housing cooperative. The architect convinced them to build high-rise and that the flats should be large, well-ventilated and well-lit[?] Tall buildings allow for more people to live in less space. A Coruna is the city with the largest average building height in Spain and some of its square kilometres are the most densely populated in the entire country. Let's look at the map, which shows all the buildings constructed in the capital of the Galician province according to their height. The ones in pink are the tallest buildings and the ones in green are the ones with the fewest floors. [leyenda-edificio-en] In A Coruna, as in all big Spanish cities, people live in apartments Spain is one of the countries with the highest percentages of apartment dwellers in the world, according to data from the OECD. The concentration of population in a small spaces is even greater than in countries such as Switzerland, Germany or Italy. Only in South Korea more people live in collective dwellings than in Spain. Percentage (%) of population living in collective dwellings, as opposed to single-family houses and townhouses Country % living in apartments [k] South Korea 74% [e] Spain 65% [c] Switzerland 62% [g] Greece 59% [d] Germany 56% [i] Italy 53% [s] Sweden 47% [p] Portugal 45% [j] Japan 44% [e] EU 41% [f] France 34% [c] Canada 33% [u] USA 26% [b] Belgium 22% [n] Netherlands 21% [g] UK 15% Source: OCDE Why and how did we get here? Join us on this historical tour and we'll show you. Let's travel to Barcelona's old town: the Ciutat Vella district. These narrow streets were enclosed by a wall until 1854. The population density was high. It was believed that diseases were spread in the form of poisonous air through miasmas. This is how cholera was depicted in the 19th century [colera-imagen] Ildefons Cerda wanted to demonstrate that the high population density was deadly. With his design of the Eixample, influenced by the hygienist movement, his proposed planning for the city lowered population density and regenerated the air. Cerda thought of open blocks with interior gardens. Speculation truncated his plan. In the end, some areas of the Eixample became denser than the Ciutat Vella. Today, Barcelona is one of the tallest and densest cities in the country. So are the municipalities on its periphery, such as L'Hospitalet or Santa Coloma, which grew from the 1950s onwards, as a result of the rural exodus. Data from the Spanish Cadastre (not includign Euskadi and Navarra) shows this relationship in most Spanish cities. The taller the constructions in the cities are, the higher its population density. In addition to the Barcelona metropolitan area, other urban areas such as Cadiz and Valencia are among the densest and tallest so far. Comparison between population density and average height of cities with more than 20,000 inhabitantsscroll Source: Spanish Cadastre, INE (Spanish Statistical Office) Between 1950 and 1975, thousands of Spaniards migrated from the countrysideto the city. Franco's dictatorship Ministry of Housing promoted the construction of high-rise housing estates to accommodate them. This is the "Antonio Rueda" housing group, consisting of 1,002 low-income social housing units. This type of development was influenced by the modern movement. During the 60's and 70's more dwellings were built in Spain, and these were higher than ever. Thus, the first 'metropolitan crowns' were created, surrounding the historic nuclei and the 'ensanches' (widenings) of the beginning of the century. Buildings with 5 or more stories per decade [grafico-evolucion-mas5plantas] Source: Spanish Cadastre Housing blocks built under Francoist developmentalism started with four stories because there was no money for elevators. Then came the H-shaped blocks, which incorporated an elevator and more stories so as to make it profitable. The distribution of dwellings in each city according to the number of floors in the building shows this phenomenon. For example, most of the industrial belts within large cities concentrate their housing in 5-story buildings. Also developed in the 1970s, other industrial estates such as Fuenlabrada, Alcorcon and L'Hospitalet condense most of their housing in buildings with seven, eight or more floors. Distribution of dwellings in each municipality according to the number of floors of the buildingscroll Source: Spanish Cadastre An example of these H-shaped polygon developments is in Mostoles, on the outskirts of Madrid. From the 1980s onwards, the rural exodus slowed down. At the same time, the 'urban sprawl', inspired by American suburbs, arrived in Spain. Municipalities such as Sant Cugat del Valles (Barcelona), Godella (Valencia) or Pozuelo (Madrid) are good examples of urban sprawl. The housing is single-family. The population density is very low, which increases the cost of public services. But such real estate is a luxury and does not reach many people. Urban sprawl would continue in the form of townhouses[?], especially during the 1990s, and housing blocks. In Santa Marta de Tormes, in the metropolitan area of Salamanca, there are several developments of townhouses, also called 'pearl necklaces'. This change is clearly shown in the evolution of housing built in each decade in Spain. While buildings of five or more floors were in the majority during the first development boom in the 1960s and 1970s, during the real-estate bubble mainly low-rise dwellings were built. Evolution of the number of dwellings built in each decade, according to the number of floors of the buildingscroll Source: Spanish Cadastre Parallel to the townhouse fever, and after the polygons and H-blocks, came the next generation of housing blocks: the perimeter block, which would predominate from the 1990s until the bursting of the real-estate bubble and after the recovery. Parque Venecia, a neighborhood in Zaragoza, is a prime example of a new neighborhood with perimeter blocks. It was planned in the middle of the bubble and its urbanization began in 2008. Its 7,000 residents, young families with children, have denounced the lack of public services. . These new 'ensanches' offer more affordable housing than the consolidated city and attract the middle classes. They tend to be sparse and disconnected from the city. City centers rised in value before the outbreak of COVID-19. After the pandemic, the demand for single-family homes and apartments in the metropolitan areas has increased. Evolution of the percentage (%) of single-family home sales and purchases [grafico-evolucion-unifamiliares] Source: Bank of Spain But contemporary urban planning trends point in another direction: compact, complex and cohesive cities. What is the appropriate height for a city? And what is the appropiate density? Where is Spanish urban planning heading and where should it be heading? Five ideas for the cities of the future [mushro] Neighborhoods like mushrooms. Single-family housing developments need not be unsustainable. In the UK and the Netherlands such areas with reasonable densities exist, and they are well connected by public transport. "In London, the high-street, a dense commercial street surrounded by low-rise houses, works," says architect and urban planner Alvaro Ardura. "One provocative theory is that the real demon is horizontal division: apartments, not townhouses. If the owner of the land could not build in height, he would think more about it when it comes to speculating." In the 'mushroom' model, the center of the neighborhood concentrates the services and the rest of the buildings are single-family, but with a certain density (not in large plots). [reloj] 15-minute cities. Related to the above is the 15-minute city, popularized by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo. "The idea is to develop multipurpose neighborhoods where you can meet your needs. In that sense, the dense Mediterranean city is difficult to improve upon. The challenge is to transform it: remove asphalt, add nature and avoid speculation," adds Isabelle Anguelovski, PhD in Urban Planning from MIT. Seen another way, it is the 'city of care'. "Cities have always been considered centers of production and consumption. We are moving towards models that include other voices: women, children, the elderly and the socially invisible. But we face a status quo that is difficult to challenge.". [edific] Regeneration of dense areas. Related to the above is the 15-minute city, popularized by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo. "The idea is to develop multipurpose neighborhoods where you can meet your needs. In that sense, the dense Mediterranean city is difficult to improve upon. The challenge is to transform it: remove asphalt, add nature and avoid speculation," adds Isabelle Anguelovski, PhD in Urban Planning from MIT. Seen another way, it is the 'city of care'. "Cities have always been considered centers of production and consumption. We are moving towards models that include other voices: women, children, the elderly and the socially invisible. But we face a status quo that is difficult to challenge." [tren] Metropolises with a good commuter rail network. "We have the most important HSR network in the world and metropolitan areas without a decent commuter rail network," stresses Joan Romero, professor of Human Geography at the University of Valencia. "Since the 1990s, the creation of real cities has not been accompanied by good public mobility policies." The head of mobility at Greenpeace, Adrian Fernandez, gives the recipe to get it right: mix uses (residential, commercial and offices), well-defined corridors (better people going in one direction than in multiple), similar demand at all times (the opposite of a dormitory city where transport is used to get to and from work) and sufficient density to get to stops in a few minutes. [famili] Compactness, complexity and cohesion. "In the face of dispersion, compactness. In the face of specialization, complexity. And in the face of segregation, cohesion," says Oriol Nel-lo, PhD in Geography and one of Spain's leading experts on urban planning. In other words: neither dispersion and concentration to the extreme, but "continuous growth with reasonable density"; nor exclusively residential areas, but a mixture of uses. Finally, Nel-lo advocates social cohesion. "And not only for groups to live together, but also for them to pay taxes in the same place. If everyone pays their taxes in a municipality, low-income people will never have access to good services. There is an instrumental reason. This is the most progressive urbanism." [link-mapa] Explore the height map of your city Journalism that makes a difference is only possible with the support of our readers. If you like our work and think it is worthwhile, please help us BECOME A MEMBER How this project was done To make this report, elDiario.es has collected, processed and analyzed the cartographic data of more than 12 million buildings constructed throughout Spain published by the website of the General Directorate of the Spanish Cadastre. The downloading of height data from 7,610 municipalities has been automated, with the exception of Euskadi and Navarra, which have their own cadastral body. For the calculation of the average heights per decade and municipality, industrial or agricultural buildings have not been taken into account and the part of each building that occupies more built volume has been considered (buildings with several heights are divided into fragments). Buildings with more than 100 floors have been discarded because of obvious computer errors. During the process, elDiario.es has identified some technical errors in the published data that the cadastral agency has corrected after notice from this media. The year of each building refers to the time of the beginning of construction. For the elaboration of this special report we have consulted different experts in urbanism and architecture: Oriol Nel-lo, PhD in Geography, former director of the Institute of Metropolitan Studies of Barcelona and former secretary of Territorial Planning of the Generalitat; Javier Martinez, president of the Union de Agrupaciones de Arquitectos Urbanistas; Joan Romero, professor of Human Geography at the University of Valencia; Laura Gil, architect by the School of Architecture of A Coruna; Alvaro Ardura, architect at the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid; Isabelle Anguelovski, PhD in Urban Planning from MIT and director of the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability; Antonio Lopez Gay, researcher at the Centro de Estudios Demograficos, and Adrian Fernandez, public works engineer and head of mobility at Greenpeace. Translated from Spanish by Julian Cnochaert. Share this project facebook twitter logo