The Urban Dimension of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of Spain. An Analysis from the Europeanization Studies Perspective

Abstract

This work is based on the identification of the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan (PRTR) potential to give rise to an evolution of the urban policy capable of contributing to the sustainability and resilience of the Spanish framework in a time of crisis. The study proposes to answer the question: Does the PRTR have an urban dimension? to identify, immediately afterward, if it is consolidating the translation of European Union principles of sustainable development in the urban policy of our country. As the PRTR is an instrument of European genealogy, generated within the response that the EU has given to the pandemic crisis through Next Generation EU, the analysis is conceptually inserted in the studies on the Europeanization of urban policies. The study is based on a mixed qualitative methodology that addresses the content and discourse of the Plan as well as the PRTR calls with a marked urban character. The work identifies a sectoral urban dimension in the Plan, where the frameworks and concepts that have guided the urban policy of the EU in recent decades (particularly the principle of integrated sustainable urban development) are not transposed explicitly. This dimension is formalized through investments in sectoral domains, where there is a high degree of Europeanization. The PRTR understands “the urban” as the territory where these investments are deployed, not as an integrated action approach to support cities in making the transition that requires the European Green Deal.