Pateando el litoral: La construcción del territorio del turismo de masas a través de sus mapas

Abstract

This thesis is founded upon the hypothesis that the coastline is a unique territory with particular features that lead to specific uses and to the development of specific land-use models, which, given this specificity, should be viewed within the framework of spatial planning. The analysis of population and housing growth in Spanish coastal provinces since the early twentieth century permits the quantifying of tourism’s impact upon the transformation of the coastal territory. The mapping of urban transformations in the coastal strip, from Portbou to Ayamonte, during the second half of the twentieth century permits the characterization of the forms of coastal growth. And from these forms of growth it is possible to identify the characteristic occupation patterns of a new form of dispersed coastal city constructed on a massive scale on the coastline, by and for tourism; it as an activity that creates a form of urbanism with conditions vastly different than those of the traditional city.