Centros urbanos vs sprawl: expansión urbana y equipamientos en las capitales valencianas

Abstract

The Valencian Community has experienced one of the greatest urban sprawl processes of the entire Spanish autonomous communities and thus, has distressed the traditional balance between the city center and its peripheries. This paper aims to analyze these processes with the three Valencian community province capitals as case studies —Alicante, Castellón de la Plana y Valencia—. To this purpose, two phenomena are considered, the urban growth pattern and the urban facilities location on each city. The data and cartography information sources used to this end were the Corine Land Cover (CLC) and the Land Cover and Use Information System of Spain (SIOSE). The first one studies the relationship between both urban growth fabric types, continuous and discontinuous, and reveals whether the urban expansion and sprawl has reinforced or not the central city. The second one provides the geographic location of specific land use activities, thus; the concentration or dispersion of these within the city and the territory can be easily evaluated. The resulting data of both approaches clearly distinguishes three very different urban patterns.