CONEIXEMENT I SOCIETAT 04 ARTICLES

THE AND THE REGION: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF

Ricard Pié*

The increase in the number of publicly funded in Catalonia, the emergence of four private universi- ties, the major urban impact on the cities of , , Reus, Tarragona and as a result of the implantation of their respective universities, together with demographic factors such as the decline in the higher education population, as well as the need to rationalise the present map of universities in Catalonia, call for a considered appraisal of the relationship between the university and the region, as well as the relevance of that relationship to regional and academic restructuring policies affecting Catalan universities in the future.

Contents

1. The university and its surrounding region 2. The founding of the medieval university, an urban phenomenon 3. The crisis of the traditional university model and the re-founding of the university as a temple of knowledge 4. The American experience: from rural college to mass university 5. The university as a motor of regional development 6. Spanish universities and their struggle for renewal 7. The difficult years, from the Spanish Civil War to the coming of democracy 8. The explosion of the university map in under the new autonomous regions 9. The genesis of today’s university map in Catalonia 10. Some questions concerning the Catalan university map in relation to the differential value of region

* Ricard PIÉ is an architect and senior lecturer at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia

16 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

1. The university and its to be an urban phenomenon which arose as it be- surrounding region came necessary to find an open, concurrent space of freedom for the advance of knowledge. Monasteries There are many dimensions to the debate on the role were good places for the gathering and conservation of the university campus within the region. This role of knowledge, but they were also too closed for a soci- will be influenced not only by the specific conditions ety which was undergoing a transformation and of the physical space in which the university evolves, which was eager for education and knowledge. This but also by the way in which the given institution con- shift from the monastery to the city did not entail any rift ceives its academic, social and research activities in between the two, but rather came about gradually relation to its surrounding area. In a globalised world, during the 12th and 13th centuries. By the 13th centu- in which the universitas must provide a space for the ry, there were thirteen universities in Europe; among cultivation of universal culture, a reflection on knowl- them were those of Paris, founded in 1170, Oxford, edge considered from the perspective of the region founded in 1214, Cambridge, founded in 1229, and and its conditions will add value to the debate, intro- Salamanca, founded in 1230. ducing the specific characteristics of each individual place as a differential value. The campus can provide During that period, the episcopal and monastic not only the physical space in which the university schools in the majority of European countries came carries out its activities, but also a space of relation- under papal protection. In the case of the kingdoms ships generating knowledge and specificity. of Castile and Aragon, where they came under the authority of the crown, they were transferred to the The aim of this text is to carry out just such a reflection, cities and endowed with extraterritorial status – beginning with the history of the university and con- which they retain to this day as one of the funda- cluding with a number of considerations on the case mental attributes of the university and its right of ac- of Catalonia, with a view to furthering the debate and ademic freedom – which guaranteed them sufficient contributing to a discussion of the future. Our intention autonomy to achieve their objectives. The founding is to transcend the purely architectural and town-plan- and genesis of the individual universities followed di- ning aspects in order to evaluate some of the chal- verse paths and was, from a planning point of view, lenges posed in relation to the university, as well as the quite different. In some cases, it was the result of a problems and concerns of interest to the society with change in the statutes of the episcopal schools; in which the university shares a common space. others, it was the result of teachers grouping to- gether and being given the «faculty» to carry out their teaching, while in some cases, it arose from 2. The founding of the medieval students banding together to solve their problems. university, an urban phenomenon The creation of the universities was an act towards Historically speaking, the universities were founded the modernisation of learning and the education of when «learning» passed from the monasteries to the the nobility. The early Middle Ages had been a diffi- heart of the cities. In a sense, the university can be said cult period (which was not overcome, from a territori-

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al point of view, until until a system of cities was con- accordingly, the civil authorities made a concerted ef- solidated which established regional powers and fort to move the study of religious matters to the Uni- paved the way to bourgeois society) during which versity of Paris. Paris offered an urban university mod- the crafts and commercial exchange gradually el in which the university’s own buildings blended and gained ascendancy as the chief economic activities. were integrated into the city as a whole. The district ly- From that moment on, the city became the context ing on the left bank of the Seine –the Latin Quarter– for the new economic activities and provided a grouped together the colleges, forming a dense fabric space for the education and training of the clerics made up of university buildings and those industries and scholars required by the incipient bourgeoisie. related to the university, such as copyists, booksellers, boarding houses and refectories.

In Britain, universities adopted a different territorial From a functional point of view, the univer- model, being located outside the capital city in two sity was simultaneously a place in which the small towns not far from London: Oxford and Cam- bridge. Although modelled on Paris, these universi- community both studied and lived, provi- ties bowed to the concerns expressed by various ding a space not only for teaching but also authors of the period that students should be sent for social relations and activities. away from the capital in order to focus them on their studies and shield them from the harmful influences of the city. Pablo Campos, an architect and expert on the history of universities in Spain, illustrates similar The first university was founded in Bologna, in concerns by recalling that King Alfonso X, called the 1088, as a student guild set up to organise studies Learned, of Castile advocated precisely the same and elect a rector. The university was located in a arrangement1 in his Siete Partidas, written between city situated on the route linking the Po valley to 1256 and 1263. In Catalonia, Barcelona’s Consell de Rome. Bologna was a great commercial centre in Cent, the governing institution composed of 100 cit- which civil and canonical law studies flourished in izens, repeatedly opposed the establishment of a the clash between the emerging new mercantile university (the «Estudis Generals») in Barcelona. society, on the one hand, and ecclesiastical law, on the other, which had inherited the rich legacy of Despite the fact that from the outset two such dif- historical knowledge and the bases of Roman law. ferent territorial locations emerged, university build- ings, both in continental Europe and in the British In 1170 the University of Paris (which was to be the Isles, were centred on the monasteries. The univer- model for all universities of the age) opened its doors, sity building of that period, the college, was an in- organised as a fellowship of masters, whose principal ward-looking structure with a central ground-plan, aim was the teaching of theology. The shift in temporal its characteristic feature being the cloister. From a power to the north of Europe meant that Rome would functional point of view, the university was simulta- no longer be the exclusive capital of religious affairs; neously a place in which the community both stud-

1 CAMPOS CALVO-SOTELO (2000), p. 24.

18 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

ied and lived, providing a space not only for teach- ucation. Its recognised status, the strength of its ar- ing but also for social relations and activities. guments, the progressive independence of its activity in relation to the civil authorities, the weight of religious The University of Paris evolved through the found- tradition and the preeminence it gave to theoretical ing and sum total of its colleges, such as that knowledge –particularly in matters of religion and the- founded in 1257 by Louis IX’s chaplain, Robert de ology– over practical knowledge, gradually caused it Sorbon, which gradually spread throughout the ur- to become remote from a society which was just ban fabric. The Latin quarter of the period took the awakening from a state of relative torpor. form of a cluster of colleges comprising various el- ements, which constituted an irregular urban net- From the end of the 17th century (according to sev- work in which the various university institutions eral authors, from the late Middle Ages), a number of were represented by their respective cloisters. groups in society such as the military, sailors, crafts- men and the early industrialists began to approach In England, it was the colleges –major landowners in knowledge from a practical viewpoint; from the need their own right– that determined urban form. David to find solutions to specific problems with a view to Loggan’s map of Oxford, the Oxonia Illustrata of enhancing their activity. The military’s interest lay in 1675, shows the city as a system of interlocking rec- materials, geometry and the technology required by tangular university buildings comprising one or more a modern military force. Trade and overseas naviga- inter-connected cloisters. The residential areas of tion, which still had unknown territory to discover, the city appear as an appendage of lesser impor- were interested in cartography and geodesy, preci- tance. In Cambridge, the colleges were situated on sion mechanics and horology, as well as the latest the periphery, marking the boundary between city techniques in nautical engineering. Manufacturing and countryside. Even today, King’s College and and industry were busy designing machines to make Trinity College extend back from the street towards manufacturing processes easier and inventing new the River Cam through a series of hierarchically or- products and production processes. dered elements. Due to its formal and organisational characteristics, Robert Auzelle2 defines this type of The Enlightenment, with its utilitarian rationalism, was arrangement as the «quadrangle d’éducation». the movement which was to voice the harshest criti- cism of the universities of the day, arguing for the need to create other platforms, such as academies, to 3. The crisis of the traditional modernise knowledge. As early as 1459, the Platonic university model and the Academy of Florence3 had been created; in 1657, re-founding of the university Colbert founded the Académie Royale des Sciences as a temple of knowledge in Paris; in 1662, Charles II founded the Royal Society of London; and in 1672, Emperor Leopold I founded For four centuries, the university was the sole reposi- the Academia Imperialis Leopoldina Naturae Curioso- tory of knowledge and was responsible for higher ed- rum4. Thus, given the universities’ inability to bring

2 Robert AUZELLE, Atlas de l’urbanisme, quoted in LENGLART and VINCE, 1992. 3 Disbanded in 1521. 4 Now known as the Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina.

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themselves into the modern age, the échelons of at the beginning of the 19th century with the re- power decided to entrust scientific research to the opening of the Sorbonne and the creation of the academies. The remit of the university was to educate «polytechnic schools», where higher education was the spirit, or intellect, using a formula based on tradi- conceived as a body of curricula shared by a number tion and grounded in the most entrenched meta- of different professions. The courses of study were to physics, whereas the academies applied their en- be based on an in-depth knowledge of the core sci- deavours to research; the British academy focussed ences (mathematics, physics, chemistry and biolo- primarily on practical research, while the French acad- gy) and training which was directly related to prac- emy was devoted to basic theoretical research. tice. During this period, the universities opened their doors to the sons of the bourgeoisie, who opted for a highly selective university education –similar to that of the top functionaries at the écoles speciales– de- From the mid-19th century, the liberal city signed to advance trade, industry and navigation. began to invent new structures around which it would organise itself: railway sta- In Germany, the process of national reconstruction went hand-in-hand with the refashioning of the uni- tions, large department stores, grand ho- versities. In 1809, Wilhelm von Humboldt founded tels, ... and, finally, the universities, as tem- the modern University of Berlin at the behest of the ples of humanistic and scientific knowledge. king of Prussia. As distinct from the French model, the German university model brought together and integrated both the humanistic tradition and knowl- edge deriving from the natural sciences with a view The crisis in the universities became so acute that to preparing graduates for an economic and social in 1793 the revolutionary Convention Nationale revolution brought about not by ousting the ruling closed down the universities of the Ancien Régime classes but by changing their role, according to a and soon afterwards the first «special schools» formula which has been the distinctive hallmark of were founded. The Enlightenment and Jacobin the Prussian industrial revolution, compared with concept of the Napoleonic State viewed Govern- the model followed in England and France. ment as a great apparatus, the function of which was to manage and modernise the country. Gov- The German university was an urban university, ernment could not be a government run by the which had nothing to do with colleges, but was aristocracy or one which relied on the incipient rather organised by means of departments, where manners of a liberal democracy. The State required the most important features were the buildings de- a body of specialist, high-ranking civil servants who signed specifically for study and research: library, had the expertise and ability to solve the problems laboratories, reading rooms, gymnasium, adminis- posed by major public works, the exploitation of re- trative buildings, university dining rooms and student sources and even the administration of the State. associations; of lesser importance was the accom- There was no place in this new world for a universi- modation for teachers and students. The university ty which speculated on the knowledge of the past. was a place for learning, study and experimental The re-founding of the universities on scientific practice and it was located within the city because bases at the service of society came about in France the city was the natural medium for modern society.

20 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

The architectural expression of this model was the ground-plan, organised around an open space university building conceived as a temple of knowl- –known as a lawn– which was flanked by a double edge. Until that time, the city had been represented row of buildings linked by a long colonnade in which through the three structures or organs of the Ancien teaching activities and the living quarters of the teach- Régime: the church, the royal palace and the castle- ing staff and students were housed. At the north end, fortress. From the mid-19th century, the liberal city be- overlooking the lawn (which would later become gan to invent new structures around which it would or- known as the campus), was the library. In this project, ganise itself: railway stations, as the hubs of a new the university campus is seen as an «academic vil- dimension in communications; large department lage», designed as a self-contained space in which stores, as a space for consumer activity; grand hotels, the university community could live and study, far as the expression of a burgeoning tourist industry and away from the dangers of the city. a new way of travelling; and, finally, the universities, as temples of humanistic and scientific knowledge. The Land Grant College Act, signed by President Lin- coln in 1862, brought about two major changes. The traditional college was an elitist institution designed for 4. The American experience: from the training of theologians, teachers and lawyers. Fed- rural college to mass university eral Law changed that orientation by making access more democratic, opening up higher education to In the United States, the implantation of the univer- women and to Black Americans and introducing new sities dates back to the 17th century: in 1636, Har- academic curricula encompassing agriculture, engi- vard College was founded in Massachussetts, fol- neering and sciences, the economic activities which lowed by: Yale College, Connecticut, in 1701; the were the driving forces behind colonisation. Moreover, College of New Jersey (Princeton), in 1746, and the Act ceded Federal land to the individual States as King’s College (Columbia), New York, in 1754. an incentive to the creation of new campuses. Colonial society was quick to grasp the fundamen- tal importance of education. Only six years after the The above-mentioned changes were materialised colonisation of the Bay of Massachussetts, the thanks to the proposals of the landscape architect statutes of the first university college were passed. Frederick Law Olmsted, who between 1860 and The college was located in the small town of Cam- 1890 was actively involved in the projects for some bridge and was named after John Harvard (who twenty universities. The plans for the College of died in 1638) in recognition of the donations made California, designed by Olmsted in 1866, are to the institution by its philanthropic benefactor. grounded in an egalitarian, democratic vision which rejects any separation between the theoreti- Initially, the American university model was styled af- cal and practical education of students of agricul- ter the English college and designed as a rural ele- ture and their education as citizens. The campus ment, thus reflecting the colonisation process during was no longer organised according to the hierar- that period. In fact, it was not until after Independence chy followed in previous projects, and it sought a that America developed a distinct university model of more direct relationship with nature, not simply for its own. The plans drawn up by Thomas Jefferson in practical reasons, but because it was believed that 1817 for the University of Virginia in Charlottesville be- such a relationship provided a source of spiritual came the blueprint. It was conceived on a central values of the kind that were being lost in the cities.

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The most decisive change for the contemporary versities, and by 1961 their number had risen to American university, however, was to come at the four million. end of the 19th century, when the German model was imported. The new university was an urban one From that time on, higher education began to be re- and its structure had to follow the town-planning garded as a flourishing «industry». Not only was theories of the day. The most representative project there an exponential increase in the number of stu- of the period is the one designed in 1899 by Emile dents, but there was also a boom in the range of Bernard and which won the competition for the Uni- courses on offer. Faced with the pressure of de- versity of Berkeley. Its inspiration lay clearly in the mand, higher education embarked on a process of Beaux– Arts style, which had arrived in America as lowering its requirements and student achievement part of the town-planning discourse on the «city levels in order to expedite the flow of graduates and beautiful». It was a grand, lavish design presided prevent the collapse of institutions. All this gradually over by the library and the gymnasium which, be- led to the emergence of a league-table in the univer- hind its highly dramatic exterior, sought to give a ra- sities and in the degree courses that they offered. tional response to the new requirements. The above-mentioned changes have had repercus- Until the emergence of modern architecture, Ameri- sions on the number, size and planning criteria ap- can universities saw various fashions come and go plied to university campuses. With regard to size, it without any changes being made either to the aca- should be noted that in 1962 there were some two demic model or to the planning of universities, al- thousand American institutions which at that time though the fashions no doubt illustrated the attitudes had expansion projects under way, while some two of the leaders of those institutions at any given time. It hundred were considering building new campuses. was not until after the Second World War, however, As for planning, given the volume as well as the im- that American universities entered a new phase, coin- portance of the activity in question, in 1966 the So- ciding with a change in the social and economic con- ciety for College and University Planning was set up, ditions which had given rise to the modern university. which in 1972 began to publish a specialist journal entitled Planning for Higher Education. After the Second World War, the university scene changed radically as a result of the massive influx These transformations have resulted in a university of students into higher education. In the United campus which constitutes a city in its own right, with States5 the first contingent of students came from all the advantages and disadvantages to which cities the ranks of the war veterans, who were given all are prone: problems relating to size and zoning ac- kinds of assistance to facilitate their access to cording to use, housing and services, traffic conges- university. The next wave was due to an increase tion and transport. Accordingly, campus planning in the number of people deciding to go to univer- and university building design have in turn provided sity, and, in the 1960s, to the baby boom genera- an opportunity to experiment with modern theories tion flooding into higher education. In 1947, there of urban planning and architecture. In 1938, Frank were over two million students in American uni- Lloyd Wright designed the Florida Southern College

5 TURNER, 1995, p. 249.

22 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

as a scaled-down version of his imaginary ideal city, The most innovative experiments were to come from and Mies van der Rohe drew the plans for the Illinois the younger generation of architects, who were criti- Institute of Technology in what was a functionalist in- cal of the rigid formality of the theses espoused by terpretation of the American campus. the CIAM conferences. Team X, as the group came to be known, advocated a more structuralist ap- The Athens Charter, which was the nom de guerre proach to urban growth. Their proposals eventually of «The functionalist city», approved by the IV Inter- took shape in a number of university design projects. national Conference on Modern Architecture (CIAM One of these was for the Free University of Berlin, IV) in 1933, was to have an enormous impact on city built by the architects Woods and Schiedhelm be- planning as well as on the modern concept of the tween 1963 and 1973; it was conceived as a great, university campus. According to the Charter, the flexible, modular carpet divided into a series of inter- city should be planned on the basis of four basic secting squares, which could evolve to keep abreast functions: working, living, recreation and transport. of the changing university scene. Efficient urban planning would involve the separa- tion of the ground occupied into monofunctional sectors, thus avoiding the conflict arising from mixed uses, confident that the relationship between In recent years, a major change has come the sectors would be solved by means of an effec- about in the way in which universities and tive solution to traffic, both vehicle and pedestrian. their relationship to their surroundings are Mies van der Rohe’s project for the Illinois Institute conceived. of Technology was a manifesto, launched at a time when his proposals constituted no longer a mere method but rather an architectural style, elevating the solutions proposed by the CIAM conferences Nevertheless, campus architecture finally aban- to the status of formal blueprints. The International doned this supposedly more articulated and flexible Style, as the movement came to be known, laid model. The great megastructures designed to cater down the artistic and functional guide-lines for an to the new needs of universities have proved to be expanding university campus facing major prob- extremely rigid, artificially distorting public spaces, lems of growth and modernisation. and formally ill-suited to a democratic and open uni- versity whose mission is to draw closer to society. The chief exponents of this new style were the pro- posals and projects designed by the architectural practice of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) for 5. The university as a motor the campus of the University of Illinois in Chicago in of regional development 1963. Whilst working within the orthodoxy estab- lished by Mies van der Rohe, SOM introduced a num- In recent years, as universities have become directly ber of variations on the latter’s formal reductionism, involved in the processes of technological and scien- proposing a degree of formal hierarchy by linking cer- tific innovation, as well as in the social and economic tain elements together and separating traffic along development of their surrounding regions, a major the lines discussed in the recent CIAM conferences. change has come about in the way in which universi-

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ties and their relationship to their surroundings are parks, Silicon Valley and the Boston Area-Route conceived. Nineteenth-century reform in the universi- 128 complex; England’s university-driven science ties emphasised a need for the scientific and experi- parks; and France’s technopolis projects, which mental education of students, with the purpose of have emerged as exceptional urban-planning plat- providing them with a basic training which would en- forms for advanced industry. able them to keep abreast of all the technological in- novations likely to occur during their lifetime. Research Silicon Valley and Boston Area-Route 128 are the and applied knowledge was the prerogative of enter- two best-known examples; in the case of Silicon prise, whilst basic research was the responsibility of Valley, because it has grown up in a rural area the universities. It was an economic and industrial where there was no previous industrial tradition, context in which the whole structure of production in and in the case of Area-Route 128 because it is an the most advanced countries revolved around major extraordinary concentration of technology resulting enterprises, which articulated and supervised applied from a process of industrial relocation within the research and production at all levels. greater metropolitan area of Boston, similar to the industrial deconcentration which has occurred to The energy crisis of the 1970s, with the ensuing dis- the south of Paris, in London’s Heathrow triangle appearance and delocalisation of traditional sectors and in the metropolitan area of Tokyo. of the economy, the globalisation of the economic system, technological change, the strengthening of The Silicon Valley phenomenon can only be under- the information society and, above all, the accelera- stood in the light of the key role played by the Univer- tion in the generation of knowledge and the interde- sity of Stanford, which at the end of the 1930s en- pendence among all the players involved in the pro- couraged its brightest graduates to develop their duction processes, made it necessary to redefine skills in business ventures on plots of land ceded by the relationship between higher education, re- the University. After the Second World War, the Uni- search and the transfer of knowledge between uni- versity sowed the seed of the future Silicon Valley by versity, government and the business world. creating an industrial park on the campus. The park was opened in 1951; four years later, it comprised 7 This new relationship was put to the test with the enterprises; in 1960, that number had risen to 32; emergence of the technology parks, in a series of by 1970, there were 71, and in 1988, when there initiatives undertaken by regional governments to were no longer any vacant lots, the park comprised combat the economic crisis and the problem of 90 enterprises, employing 25,00 workers. disindustrialisation in which the universities were called upon to play a direct role. The Silicon Valley success story would have ended there, had it not been for the millions of dollars which As a result of the oil crisis, various new experiments poured into it from the military budget. As Manuel were developed which have since become out- Castells6 observes, in 1960 the military market ac- standing points of reference. These include: Amer- counted for 70% of the Valley’s total sales; in the ica’s two «spontaneous» generation technology 1980s, it accounted for 25%. Sales to the military,

6 CASTELLS, 1994, p. 42.

24 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

moreover, represented a clear advantage over civil The French experience, on the other hand, grew investments because the military was prepared to out of different conditions. Sophia– Antipolis, the take greater risks in order to ensure its technological first and most famous of the French technopolis lead over the enemy. In other words, it was the Cold ventures, was a private initiative which, thanks to War which subsidised the technological develop- the firm backing of government, turned into a busi- ments of Silicon Valley and Area-Route 128. ness success and an economic motor for Nice and its surrounding area. Sophia-Antipolis rose out of Route 128 was formerly a country road running the Alpes-Maritimes region, which until 1970 had north-south through the centre of Boston, which in lived exclusively on tourism and its declining agri- 1951 was transformed into a major highway and culture. In 1969, Pierre Laffitte, a former deputy di- pivotal axis of Boston’s first peripheral industrial rector of the École de Mines in Paris, promoted a ring. In 1955, there were 40 companies spread small industrial zone of 50 hectares that he called along it, and ten years later that number had «the city of wisdom, science and technology». The soared to 600. This successful growth subse- aim was to attract hi-tech industries and build a quently led to traffic being channelled along Route quality real estate development in the area. Three 495, a new ring situated 24 kilometres from Route years later, in 1972, the government set up an in- 128, where the same phenomenon as that which ter-ministerial committee on regional planning occurred over fifty years ago on the old 128 is now which pronounced the venture to be one of nation- being replicated. al interest, and extended the initiative to five munic- ipalities in the region: Antibes, Briot, Mougins, Val- It is difficult to say with certainty what the factors lauris and Valbonne, covering a total area of more were behind the success of these two cases or, than 2,300 hectares. more particularly, whether their model can be ex- ported elsewhere. According to Manuel Castells7, While the success of the initiative must be attrib- the following factors have been among the most uted to all the various actors involved in the decisive: process, it was particularly thanks to the commit- ment of the regional authorities to improve the eco- – The scientific and technological knowledge de- nomic conditions of their respective areas, at a veloped by the universities in the area. time when France was embarking on the decen- – The existence of customers who dared and were tralisation of government. It was also thanks to the prepared to face a high level of risk, such as that French State’s establishment of various research accepted by the military during the Cold War. centres in an area where there had previously been – Abundant brainpower in the workforce. no university presence. – A strategic plan of action on the part of the uni- versities, encouraging the transfer of technology The English science parks originated in the mid- between enterprise and university. 1960s, when the then prime minister, Harold Wilson, – Socio-professional networking, resulting in the visited Silicon Valley during a trip to the United rapid circulation of information. States. Of all the British science parks, two are worth

7 CASTELLS, 1992, p. 62.

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special mention: the Cambridge Science Park, to revive the local economy by improving the core which grew up around the University, and the Aston industries of the region and boosting exports. Science Park, which was the result of cooperation between local businesses, banks and the university. In all these cases, the university as an institution has been seen as a promoter of science parks and an agent for the economic and social development of its surrounding region. Modern universities have under- Whereas until now, the university could be stood that, like Marx’s philosophy, knowledge is not merely a tool for understanding the world, but one regarded as one more element within the which is capable of bringing about its transforma- city –an urban structure– , nowadays it is tion. The autonomy of the university, a critical ap- called upon to commit itself to the role of proach to knowledge and its academic freedom cannot be used as an excuse to isolate the university economic and social driving force. from society. Whereas until now, the university could be regarded as one more element within the city –an urban structure–, nowadays it is called upon to com- mit itself to the role of economic and social driving Cambridge is a renowned English university situat- force. The campus and the relationship between the ed in a protected Green Belt area, while industries university and its surrounding region must cease to had to be located outside the Green Belt. By the be purely a question of architecture and urban plan- 1960s, this state of affairs had become untenable ning; instead, they must entail specific commitments because it stood in the way of direct contact be- and responsibilities affecting all concerned. tween the university and its laboratories, on the one hand, and the business world, on the other. In 1969, the city’s planning strategy was reformed 6. Spanish universities and their and the Cambridge Science Park was promoted struggle for renewal on land belonging to the colleges, in a venture which combined property development and coop- Spanish universities had great difficulty in meeting the eration between industry and the University. challenge of modernisation. Historically, universities had followed in the trail of a society which had failed to Aston, situated in the West Midlands, was one of make the most of the advantages that go with being a the country’s industrial motors during the first half of great world power. Trapped between its borrowed the 20th century, thanks to its electrical engineering prosperity, deriving from the exploitation of a great industry and its machinery, tools and automobile colonial empire, and a defensive, backward-looking manufacturing industries. In the 1970s, 100,000 culture which was born out of the Counter Reforma- workers from the city of Birmingham (40% of the tion, Spain and its universities, like many of its neigh- workforce) were employed by ten companies. Fol- bours, went into a long period of decline. lowing the economic crisis, which brought ruin to lo- cal industries, three institutions –Birmingham City At the beginning of the 19th century, very little was Council, the University of Birmingham and Lloyds left of that Spanish university map which had Bank– promoted the Aston Science Park in an effort evolved alongside the major European universities.

26 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

Some institutions, such as the University of Palencia with a centralised, hierarchical model based on re- (the first Castilian university, founded in 1212 only to ports written by Quintana and Calomarde, in 1813 and be abandoned shortly afterwards in 1246) had dis- 1824, respectively, along the lines set out by a docu- appeared; the Estudi General, or University, of Llei- ment approved in 1792 by the French Legislative As- da (the earliest university of the kingdom of Aragon, sembly. At the beginning of the century, the so-called which was founded by Jaume II in 1297) was closed «minor universities» of Gandía, Toledo, Osma, Oñate, down, like all the other Catalan universities, by Philip Orihuela, Osuna, Almagro and Baeza were closed V in 1717 following the War of Succession, while down. Then, at first under the mildly liberal Pidal Plan others, such as the (found- of 1845, and subsequently under the Moyano Act of ed in 1215), were brought to the brink of extinction 1857, a uniform, centralised model was imposed, ac- as a result of the confiscation of Church lands in cording to which the country was divided into ten uni- 1837, which had a severe impact on their assets. versity districts centred on the major cities (Barcelona, Granada, Madrid, Oviedo, Salamanca, Santiago, Sa- The decline of the university as an institution had be- ragossa, Seville, Valencia and Valladolid)9, the Univer- gun to be apparent from the 16th and 17th centuries. sity of Madrid being designated the Central University. From the 18th century, Spanish absolutism entrusted the army with restoring order to the country and bring- Reform of the traditional degree courses came up ing it up to date. The universities were an impenetrable against the rigidity of the system, although the uni- enclave which turned their backs on new knowledge versities gradually opened their arms to embrace and scientific progress. New knowledge in the fields of both the experience and the individual researchers medicine, physics and the experimental sciences was hailing from non-university academies and scientific to be found only in institutions outside the universities8. institutions. The influence of Napoleonic France, to- gether with the secularisation of some areas of high- The scientific revolution of the 17th century had no er education which, until that time, had been the ex- place in Spanish universities: building sciences and clusive domain of military engineers (whose technology and other related arts were developed un- influence extended far beyond matters of defence) der the auspices of the army, in the artillery and engi- was seen with the emergence of special schools un- neering academies and naval academies; medical der the direct authority of their respective ministries. advances were taught by the military surgical schools, The dilatory nature of the teaching of the old higher and new technologies were taught by the academies education institutions was a far cry from the practical and technical schools set up by civil society. requirements of a modern central administration. The special schools, and in particular the school of The renewal of Spanish universities along the lines civil engineering, became a hotbed of civil servants which were then being proposed in Europe failed, de- destined for the central administration; the schools spite the various endeavours of Charles II, Charles IV of industrial engineering, promoted by the chambers and the Constitution of 1812. The new regional plan- of industry and commerce, supplied the training ning of the universities was carried out in accordance centres with qualified staff from the world of industry.

8 As Horacio Capel writes, «In a university devoted to the training of theologians, lawyers, civil servants and doctors, where simplistic attitudes and the ex- cesses of Aristotelianism still prevailed, little importance was attached to the study of mathematics and, therefore, of geography.» (CAPEL, 1982, p. 49). 9 In addition to the overseas districts of Havana and Manila.

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Thus, by the mid-19th century, the universities had tion to a functional problem, but also, from an urban withdrawn from the small towns in which they had planning point of view, the unique and redefining previously maintained a long historical presence – character of the installations in question. Architec- partly due to their economic and scientific inviability, turally speaking, the new university building was and partly due to the new centralised model being im- composed (as it is today) by two cloisters connect- plemented – and had re-grouped in nine districts cen- ed by a central element which houses the assembly tred on the country’s major cities, some of which hall, the auditorium and the library. The Faculty of (specifically, Madrid) had no previous university tradi- Medicine was designed as a compact building situ- tion. In the case of Catalonia, the University of ated within the U-shape structure of the Hospital was closed down, while that of Barcelona was rein- Clínic. Both buildings face onto the street, thereby stated, first of all provisionally, in 1837, and then defin- emphasising their role within the urban context. itively, in 1842. Initially, the was housed in the Convent del Carme, in the Raval district, In Madrid, the Complutense University (which origi- next to the city’s Royal College of Surgeons which had nated in the closure and transfer of the University of been created in the 18th century. The university’s final Alcalá de Henares in 1836) was initially housed in the and permanent home was to be the new building de- Convento de las Salesas Nuevas and, seven years signed by Elíes Rogent between 1859 and 1885, oc- later, moved to the building which had previously cupying a site between the historic city and the new been occupied by the Jesuit novitiate. Unlike the uni- extended Barcelona, known as the Eixample. versity, the special schools were scattered around the city. The increasing number of students in Madrid, due to its status as Spain’s central university, coupled with the need to reorganise and expand the space During the 19th century, the Spanish univer- assigned to the university according to more efficient sity ceased to be an entity with a diluted criteria, led to the proposal to build a university com- presence within the city; instead, it became plex on the outskirts of the Spanish capital. The Junta Constructora de la Ciudad Universitaria , sponsored a major urban planning element. by King Alfonso XIII, was set up in 1927; it proposed to carry out an urban planning project which, in the words of Pablo Campos Calvo-Sotelo, applied crite- ria that «drank from the fountains of the Academy, During the 19th century, the Spanish university eclecticism and the Beaux-Arts school». The design ceased to be an entity with a diluted presence within was influenced by various movements in its search the city; instead, it became a major urban planning for an overall stylistic unity: the English blueprint of element. In Barcelona, both the new university ‘college + sport’, a German-type organisation based building and the Faculty of Medicine extended be- on seminars and laboratories, the philanthropic ethos yond the standard quadrangular block of the Eix- and the élitism of the American campus, the criteria of ample (in fact, they occupy two, as well as blocking the CIAM and, more specifically, the project designed off one street), thereby signalling not only the solu- for the League of Nations in Geneva, in 1927»10.

10 CAMPOS CALVO-SOTELO, 200, p. 479.

28 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

In 1928, the project for the Complutense was ap- From 1907, Catalonia’s scientific project included proved and given a decisive boost by the advent of another distinctive feature: the creation of the Insti- the Second Republic and the passing of the Univer- tut d’Estudis Catalans, an institution whose voca- sity City Act. However, in 1936 the site on which the tion was clearly that of an Academy and which was University City was being built became one of the to be the repository of scientific research, not only battlefronts in the Spanish Civil War and remained in the field of the Catalan language, but in all areas so virtually from the beginning to the end of the war, of Catalan culture. The national project of cultural with the result that more than 40% of the building and institutional revival of Catalan Studies as a work which had been carried out was destroyed. whole, in parallel with all the popular movements The subsequent rebuilding of the project began un- involving the university, cultural and scientific cen- der the new University Act of 1943. The war had tres, rambling associations and choirs, entrusted dashed all the hopes of university renewal fostered these two institutions with the responsibility for during the years of the Republic. From an architec- higher education and scientific research. tural point of view, and to quote the above-men- tioned author, the interventionism of the new admin- That project was frustrated by the Civil War, which istration was detrimental to the overall vision and relegated the university to the role it had played at unifying principles contained in the original project. the beginning of the 20th century: that of a bureau- cratic, centralised university, more or less con- cerned with the technocratic training of graduates. 7. The difficult years, from the Economic development –which was seized on as Spanish Civil War to the coming the only way out of the autarchic economy that had of democracy left Spain trailing behind the rest of Europe– and the recovery of the middle classes, who were grad- The state of affairs in Catalonia was scarcely any bet- ually able to enter higher education, raised the ter. The chief concern of the young University of need to expand the physical space occupied by Barcelona which had been restored in the 19th cen- the University and to build a new campus. tury was to achieve sufficient autonomy to carry out a project of regeneration and improvement in higher The proposal did not get off the ground until the first education, a project intended to embrace the en- student strikes of 1951, when Government became deavours of civil society: the teaching centres estab- aware of the risks involved in keeping the universi- lished by the Board of Trade, the School of Surgery ties in the city centres. The proposal finally took and the schools of surveying and industrial engineer- shape in 1953, in Nebot’s project for a University ing. Moreover, the project had the express will to con- City on land belonging to the Güell family at the far solidate a university rooted in the Catalan cultural re- end of the Diagonal Avenue in the Pedralbes district. naixença. The Decree on University Autonomy, of This planning operation raised the value of the plots 1933, only a few years after the anniversary of the first of land concerned –which were a long way from the centenary of the University of Barcelona’s restoration, city centre– by means of a grandiloquent and monu- marked the beginning of a period of euphoria which mental project devoid of urbanistic interest. was to be interrupted the following year as a result of the events of October, 1934, although it was later re- Grup R, a small group of young architects who had vived, even in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. graduated after the Civil War (Oriol Bohigas, Manuel

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Ribas and Josep Maria Martorell, among oth- The three sites chosen for the autonomous universi- ers) put forward an alternative proposal, suggesting ties could be described as «non-places», as some that the new University City should be located in geographers would say. Cantoblanco, Leioa and Barcelona’s Montjuich Park. The debate was almost Bellaterra were three areas served by poor commu- non-existent, however, and in 1957 the Faculty of nications to which the youngest university teachers Pharmacy was opened next to Pius XII Square, which were transferred, leaving the parent universities in 1952 had been the venue for the multitudinous cel- staffed by the older and less «troublesome» profes- ebrations of the XXXV International Eucharistic Con- sors. The project for the campus of the Au- gress. During this period, the location of the Universi- tonomous University of Barcelona was located on ty was strictly a problem of size and civil control. the planned Barcelona by-pass, the B30 motorway running through the Vallès, beside the future Centre Not many years later, increasing demand for uni- Direccional of Cerdanyola (now the Vallès Technolo- versity places led the then education minister Villar gy Park), between two of the tunnels which were to Palasí –by means of the Ley General de Educación run under the Collserola mountain connecting the and the 1970 education reform budget– to pro- area of the Vallès with Barcelona. mote the creation of three autonomous universities in Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao. In all three cases, In urban planning terms, the metropolitan phenom- it was a bid to move the universities out of the city enon of the three cities chosen required more exten- centres and re-locate them outside the metropoli- sive regional planning than that which had been car- tan areas in question. This initiative was not merely ried out to date. In 1953, Barcelona had approved a repressive measure, but also a timidly alternative its first supra-municipal urban plan, embracing plan resulting from the contradictions inherent in a twenty-eight municipalities11. Twelve years later, a political system which was striving to bring about study was submitted under the title «Pla director de an overall modernisation of the country whilst fail- l’àrea metropolitana de Barcelona», in which the ing to change the political principles on which it scope of action was extended to include the areas was based. The white paper, entitled Libro Blanco of the Vallès, the Alt Penedès, the and the de la Educación, which was drawn up under Villar Maresme12. According to this project, the Vallès cor- Palasí, was clearly technocratic in outlook and was ridor would be the region’s great space of the future, inspired in the most advanced European reforms, the site of what were to be the key elements in the particularly those that had been carried out in decentralisation process of the city of Barcelona – Great Britain. The white paper raised the need to the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the give the universities greater autonomy and to move large Centre Direccional de Cerdanyola. away from the urban model in favour of the British and American style of campus. The new au- The lack of political will to engage in a proper develop- tonomous universities were to be a test-run of the ment of the university autonomy project and the con- model and an experiment for the university of the cerns about growing student unrest, together with a future. lack of instruments with which to carry out a regional

11 The plan was called the Plan de ordenación de Barcelona y de su zona de influencia. 12 The Pla director of 1968 was intended to be a new approach to planning, but, due to political reasons, it did not prosper and it was submitted as a study which would be used in the revision of the 1953 Pla comarcal, subsequently re-named the Pla general metropolità de Barcelona.

30 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

planning strategy on a metropolitan scale that was The final episode affecting universities during the Fran- capable of undertaking the decentralisation of metro- co régime was of a more administrative nature, and it politan areas, made this university project one of took the form of the creation of the country’s polytech- deconcentration and urban exile. In fact, it was not nic universities in an attempt to group together the ex- just a problem of there being no political will; there isting technical schools of widely diverse origin, some were not the resources necessary to make the new of which had already been integrated into the universi- model viable. On the one hand, the halls of residence ty system. The technical schools in Barcelona had, on which would have justified the campus were not built the whole, stemmed from the initiatives of the Cham- and there was no broadening of the system of stu- ber of Commerce between the end of the 18th centu- dent grants which could have ensured the university ry and the beginning of the 19th century. The teaching community’s permanent presence on the campus. centres promoted by the Chamber of Commerce On the other hand, only the less well-endowed de- were initially housed in the Convent of Sant Sebastiá gree courses under the State’s funding scheme were (on the site now occupied by Antonio López Square) located in these areas. At that time, central Govern- and in the Llotja, the old Barcelona Exchange build- ment assigned technical university schools twice the ings, which were the premises of the School of Indus- funding received by science and arts faculties. trial Engineering, founded in 1851 as part of the Indus- trial School of Barcelona. The School of Architecture From an architectural point of view, the competition for started out as the «School of Noble Arts», in 1850 be- the Autonomous University of Barcelona provided the coming the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San opportunity to study up-to-date solutions to the form Jorge (Saint George’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts), and organisation of a brand new university campus. A with a structure and recognition comparable to that of few years earlier, there had been a number of major in- Madrid’s Escuela de San Fernando. In 1869, it be- ternational experiences in the field; the most recent, came the Provincial School of Architecture and in that of the Free University of Berlin, in 1963, was to 1874 it was incorporated into the University of provide the inspiration for the young architect , Joan Barcelona as an «escuela superior». Antoni Solans’s winning urban planning project. The fi- nal project, however, was executed by the construc- tion company according to a model based on the great architectural megastructures of previous years. From an architectural point of view, the com- It involved a system of massive bridge-buildings petition for the Autonomous University of placed perpendicular to the undulations of the terrain, Barcelona provided the opportunity to study allowing the paths along the ridges and the torrential water-courses to run, respectively, beside and under up-to-date solutions to the form and organi- the buildings. Thus, a dual traffic-flow system was cre- sation of a brand new university campus. ated in which vehicle traffic did not interfere with pedestrian traffic. The brutalist conception of the proj- ect, as built, and the lack of regard shown for both the landscape and the final details in the various parts of Between 1968 and 1970 three State polytechnic uni- the project have become one of the major handicaps versities were created in Barcelona, Madrid and Va- affecting the maintenance and updating of the Univer- lencia, in a clear bid to normalise the university status sity to meet the new demands placed upon it. of the existing technical schools. In the case of

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Madrid, this measure entailed removing the institu- 8. The explosion of the university tions concerned from the sphere of the various min- map in Spain under the new istries and creating a confederate-style university autonomous regions made up of the different institutions and centres. In the case of Barcelona and Valencia, the creation of The new Spanish Constitution of 1978, the passing the polytechnic universities meant opening their of the University Reform Act of 1986 and the transfer doors to new degree courses and putting an end to of responsibility for the universities from central Gov- the monopoly of Madrid in some areas of study. Al- ernment to the autonomous communities13 initiated though it is true that technical schools were created in a period of university expansion which has resulted some districts within the framework of the traditional in far-reaching changes for the academic map of universities, these schools did not (and, indeed, still Spain. Since the creation of the autonomous re- do not) sit comfortably in the mould of the sciences gions, Spain has carried out in very few years a large and literature-based universities. The «professional» number of initiatives which have brought universities emphasis of the teaching provided and of the schools to all those towns that aspired to be recognised as themselves, combined with the close ties between cities. The decentralised university map of Spain has the courses offered and the world of business and in- ceased to be determined by more or less rigorous dustry, set them apart from the more speculative na- criteria concerning the control of demand, the critical ture of scientific and humanistic university education. size of the institutions and specialisation in the courses of study offered; planning criteria are now By the end of the Franco period, the university scene based on the need to provide a direct service to the was in ferment. On the one hand, the university was population and to supply better services to the cities. still a centralised, bureaucratic institution, vigorously questioned both by students and the younger In recent years, the university has changed from be- teaching staff. There was an increasing demand for ing an exclusive service aimed at a more or less select university places, while at the same time students segment of the population to becoming the final showed a declining interest in humanistic courses of stage in the education of almost 50% (the highest study, preferring technical degrees and medicine percentage ever in the history of Spain) of the school- which still operated very restrictive admission proce- age/student population. This situation has come dures. From the regional point of view, the policy of about as a result of multiple interests converging: the building university cities and campuses continued, Government’s lack of commitment in regulating and although this was due more to supplying the de- promoting vocational training (which would probably mand than to the need to address a serious task of be a better way of catering to market demands); the university reform. The failure of vocational training as need to delay as long as possible the incorporation of a social alternative to a university degree, together young people into the labour market in times of eco- with the raising of the school-leaving age, resulted in nomic crisis; the social prestige deriving from a uni- the universities being regarded no longer as extraor- versity degree, the pressure from university teachers dinary centres of learning, but rather as providers of to create new teaching posts, and, more simply, the general education for the population as a whole. democratisation of student access to university.

13 In the case of Catalonia, this occurred in 1985.

32 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

The massification of the universities led to a difficult cha and the University of Extremadura), supported period in which teachers, syllabuses and resources by a system of equally powerful cities; these are proj- were ill equipped to meet the requirements that such ects designed to serve a group of cities, without a change had brought about. The Spanish authori- needing to create a university for each individual city, ties, at the level of both the State and the au- and without any limitations being imposed which tonomous communities, following the transfer of re- might favour some cities while working to the detri- sponsibilities for higher education, partly solved the ment of the others. The majority of universities fall problem by making major investments, creating new into the local category, with the exception of the as- universities throughout the country. The result of this sociated universities, which are located very near a course of action in terms of the number of campuses, major city where there is an excessive demand for degree courses, the relations between the university places (as in the case of the Universities of Alcalà de and society and its surrounding region has led to Henares and Carlos III, in Madrid), on which they many questions being raised at the present time as to capitalise by offering differentiated alternatives. the existing policy and the future strategy that will be required in order to rationalise the university map. Pablo Campos proposes a new classification of the universities into four categories, according to their From the point of view of the campuses, this period relationship to the city, whereby one may evaluate has provided a wealth of experiences, although the whether or not the university in question has been expansion carried out has relied on only two basic conceived as an element of the urban structure. The premises: the need to solve the problem of massifi- four categories are: unattached, segregated, super- cation in some centres – usually located within the peripheral and urban. The urban category is further large historic universities – and the decision to es- sub-divided into another four categories: peripher- tablish centres in all the towns wishing to acquire al, the «urban fabric» type, those which are isolated city status. Pablo Campos, who has carried out a within the city and those which have a diffused pres- detailed study on seventy-five Spanish universities, ence throughout the city. proposes to analyse the relationship between the university and its surrounding area using two crite- The «unattached» universities can be seen as those ria: regional distribution and urban location14. which occupy an ill-defined territory, hankering after another space and somehow detached from their The first criterion enables the campus to be classified surrounding territory. These are normally universities according to its relationship to the region, while the of the kind the author has classified as «associated», second permits a classification according to the ur- which suffer the trauma of exile: they resent having ban relationships which have been established. The been excluded from the parent institution and are con- former can be used to evaluate very general condi- temptuous of the territory which has become their tions and to classify universities into three large cate- new home. All three of Spain’s autonomous universi- gories: regional, local and associated. The regional ties suffer from this syndrome; their campuses were university includes those which have a polycentric never intended as an alternative model. The au- structure (such as the University of Castilla-La Man- tonomous universities were simply created as such to

14 CAMPOS CALVO-SOTELO (2000), p. 43-44.

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Figure 1 In some cases, this initial segregation is purely cir- The campus of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in the year 2000 as an example of the «unattached» campus, cumstantial. In super-peripheral universities, the according to the typology proposed by Pablo Campos campus is situated close to a relatively minor urban nucleus at some considerable distance from the city centre, and acts as an element within the urban fab- ric which leads to a revaluation of the peripheral land in what might be considered as speculation. In fact, it is a large-scale development within a metropolitan area in which the university colonises the ground, as happened, for instance, in the case of the Sant Vi- cent del Raspeig campus in Alicante.

The urban university is the most common case in the Spanish university context. Depending on where the university is situated in relation to the city, it may be classified in four different ways. The first is the peripheral campus, because although the uni- versity remains within the urban sprawl, it occupies a site which lies outside the urban centre. In such cases, the campus is planned as a monofunctional facilitate the decongestion of the central universities; area; it is like a another piece of the jigsaw puzzle they suffered all the disadvantages of being a long way that is the modern city. Very often, these campuses from the city centre while enjoying none of the advan- were built on the outskirts of cities, like residential tages of being situated in a large metropolitan area. complexes, and have gradually been swallowed up by the subsequent urban growth. The Complutense One might be forgiven for thinking that this unfortu- University of Madrid, in the Moncloa district, and the nate experience would have prevented any other University of Barcelona, in the Pedralbes district, are such initiative getting off the ground, especially in two examples of this typology. the case of a new local university. The university campus of As Lagoas-Marcosende in Vigo, Galicia, The university as «urban fabric», to use Pablo Cam- is an example of a peripheral location which, ac- pos’s definition, is not one which is located within cording to Pablo Campos, should be defined as a the urban fabric, but rather one which adopts the city segregated from the city. The problem in this latter’s form, normally reutilizing some of the urban case is not like that of the autonomous universities, fabric’s elements. It is a configuration which is whose rootlessness is of a clearly corporate nature, added to but at the same time somewhat dissolved where the teaching staff feel undermined because within the city’s urban structure, occupying blocks of the place to which they are assigned, but rather or representative elements without having a clearly- stems from the failure of city and university to see defined boundary or closed perimeter. This type of eye to eye: the city does not perceive the university campus is one of those which are most successfully as a part of itself and the university sees the city integrated into the city and, in many cases, such as merely as the source of the demand it is satisfying. the regeneration of the Sant Domènec area in

34 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

Girona, a town planning measure which has helped 9. The genesis of today’s university to revitalise depressed urban areas. map in Catalonia

Where the degree of integration is less pronounced The Catalan experience offers a perfect illustration –because of the type of element concerned or be- of some of the ways in which the problem was cause of the location of the university– Pablo Cam- tackled, as well as some of the questions current- pos classifies some campuses as isolated within the ly being raised regarding the future. As we have city. Such are the campuses of La Merced in Murcia, already explained, Catalonia’s universities have that of Saragossa, in San Francisco Square, and the had a very chequered history. From the founding rector’s building in the . The di- of the Estudi General in Lleida in 1297 to the clos- mensions of the latter are much greater than those ing of all Catalan universities and the creation of used in the city’s urban fabric, with the result that the the University of Cervera in 1717; from the entire building is singled out by virtue of its form and size Catalan university being unified in the city of and therefore is an isolated element within the urban Barcelona in 1845 to the present-day university fabric. map, Catalonia has gone from being a country without a university presence to being one which Finally, Pablo Campos defines as diffused within offers a panoply of highly differentiated institutions the urban fabric of the city those universities which and platforms. merely occupy a series of disperse and isolated buildings, with no apparent connection between them. These universities have a diluted presence in the city – usually in the historic city centre – with no In 1985, when the universities were transfe- direct functional links, so that they do not form a rred to the authority of the autonomous go- compact group of buildings such as can be seen in the Salamanca campus in Avila, or the Castilla-La vernment, the Generalitat, Catalonia’s pu- Mancha campus in Toledo. blic universities occupied a built area of 580,983 m2; in 1995, that area had increased In summary, the Spanish university experience in re- cent years has been highly diverse, in most cases to 1,052,716 m2, and by 2000 the built area driven by two main types of argument.: firstly, that occupied had increased to 1,568,755 m2. every autonomous region should have a university, and secondly, that all those towns satisfying the min- imum requirements to become cities should have a local university. The first of these two aspirations has In 1985, when the universities were transferred to been fulfilled, even though future prospects are not the authority of the autonomous government, the particularly encouraging; as for the second, it has not Generalitat, Catalonia’s public universities occu- always been accomplished with the degree of urban pied a built area of 580,983 m2; in 1995, that area planning success that might have been hoped for. had increased to 1,052,716 m2, and by 200015 the

15 BENEDITO, 2001, pp. 13-14

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built area occupied had increased to 1,568,755 Statute of Autonomy and the 1983 Universities Act m2. During this period, the number of students (in- took shape in the report entitled «Criteris per a la cluding those at private universities) has risen from programació universitària de Catalunya» (Criteria 115,430 to 185,940, while the number of degree for the planning of universities in Catalonia), drawn courses has increased fourfold, with thirty in 1986 up by a working party of the Inter-University Coun- and around one hundred-and-twenty today. More- cil of Catalonia. The report presented an up-to- over, during this period the number of universities date account of the situation of the universities at has risen from the three large universities –the Uni- that time and proposed two alternative strategies: versity of Barcelona (UB), the Autonomous Univer- the creation of three universities, one in each sity of Barcelona (UAB) and the Polytechnic Univer- provincial capital, or one new university in the city sity of Catalonia (UPC)– which were the only of Barcelona. Finally, these two alternatives were universities until 1990, to the twelve universities in merged into one and four new universities were Catalonia today. These include four new public uni- created. versities, the Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Girona (UdG), Lleida (UdL), Tarragona-Reus, known as Rovira i The first of the four new universities was the Pom- Virgili (URV); and the Universitat Oberta de peu Fabra in Barcelona, founded on 18 June, Catalunya (UOC), Catalonia’s virtual learning uni- 1990, followed eighteen months later, on 30 De- versity, which has been promoted by Catalan Gov- cember, 1991, by the other three. In an attempt to ernment, but run as a private foundation. The re- satisfy all concerned, a solution was adopted mainder are the four new private universities: Vic which was still hampered by a degree of central- (UV), promoted by the Vic City Council in conjunc- ism in favour of Barcelona, a fact which has hin- tion with a number of other bodies in the city; and dered the full and real decentralisation and diversi- the Universitat Ramon Llull (URL), the Universitat fication of the Catalan universities. It should be International de Catalunya (UIL) and the Universitat pointed out, however, that the Catalan university Abat Oliva, promoted by three different private map has resulted in a great opportunity for the foundations close to Catholic organisations. cities and areas which have welcomed the new university centres. In terms of student numbers, the largest of the above-mentioned universities is the University of In 1990, when the process of decentralisation Barcelona, with a total which is equal to the sum of began, the University of Barcelona was still in the students at the Autonomous University of the throes of transferring and expanding to- Barcelona and the Polytechnic University of Cat- wards the Pedralbes campus; the Polytechnic alonia. The three universities which are not in University of Catalonia was undergoing a period Barcelona have students totalling about one third of growth on the plots situated next to the Bruc of the number at UAB and UPC, while the private barracks in Pedralbes, adjoining the district of universities have far fewer, particularly the UV and Esplugues; meanwhile, the Autonomous Univer- the the UIL, whose student numbers are very sity of Barcelona continued to colonise and small. «tame» the Bellaterra campus. When these uni- versities came under the authority of the Gener- The decision to open four new public universities in alitat in 1985, their funding was boosted and Catalonia under the authority enshrined in the from 1995, when the pluri-annual investment

36 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

plans and the ‘programme-contracts» came into ty of Girona decided to make a concerted effort to force, it became possible for each institution to recover the old district of the city, converting the carry out its own medium-term development Àligues building, the city’s most representative planning. 16th century public building which had already been associated with various university uses, into The , which had originally its administrative headquarters; the Gothic con- been intended as a new metropolitan university to vent of Sant Domènec was turned into the Hu- be located preferably in the area (al- manities Faculty, and the buildings belonging to ready one of the areas with the greatest demo- the city’s Seminari Menor were converted into the graphic development in the vicinity of Barcelona), Education Sciences Faculty. In some periods, uni- instead became an «up-market» urban project situ- versity investment in the old district has account- ated in the old district of the city of Barcelona. ed for more than 50% of public investment in the From a university point of view, the project did not latter’s regeneration. Moreover, it has provided an solve the problems of massification in Barcelona’s injection of activity which been crucial to the other three universities. The Pompeu Fabra’s stu- process of urban recovery in a high area of the dents in 2001-2002 totalled only around 10,500, a figure which is far lower than the 41,000 students Fig. 2 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the The Pompeu Fabra University’s Ciutadella campus in 2000 65,000 students at the University of Barcelona and the 35,000 at the Polytechnic University of Catalo- nia.

In a bid to maintain the quality of its teaching, the Pompeu Fabra chose to remain a small, selective university, spread throughout a wide urban area which extends from the Ramblas, where its first centre was opened, to the area behind the Olympic Village, where it occupies the former military bar- racks. The original project was particularly ambi- tious and the university found itself in a position to reutilize as elements of its large urban campus some of the city’s most emblematic buildings and installations, such as the Capitanía, or old military headquarters, the Post Office, the former mainline railway station, Estació de França, and even the Ciutadella Park.

The other three public universities in Catalonia have followed different urban strategies, normally involving the building of two campuses –one with- in the city and one on the periphery. The Universi-

37 CONEIXEMENT I SOCIETAT 04 ARTICLES

Fig. 3 the city), which houses the administrative block Girona’s old district campus in 2000 and the arts subjects. According to Pablo Cam- pos’s classification, this element of the Universi- ty occupies an isolated position within the city. From the urban planning point of view, the most important initiative is the Cappont campus. The campus which houses the Escola Tècnica Su- perior d’Enginyeria Agraria (Higher Technical School of Agrarian Engineering), is situated on the outskirts of the city and has a direct relation- ship with the surrounding open country, while the Medical School campus is attached to the Arnau de Vilanova Hospital. The strategic value of the Cappont campus is different. Like many other cities with rivers, the urban sprawl of Llei- da is asymmetric. The reasons for this are, first- ly, because such cities normally grew up be- tween the floodland and the dry land, which meant that it was inadvisable to build on one of the banks of the river; secondly, until very re- cently, the city of Lleida had only one traffic bridge and one railway bridge crossing the river. The role of the University in this connection is to help to span the river with new bridges and walkways, and to give a unified structure to the sprawl which has gradually taken over the flood- lands.

Of all the decentralised universities, Rovira i Vir- city with relatively difficult access. The Montilivi gili University is the one with the highest critical campus, situated on one edge of the city, is more mass and a number of specialised courses of conventional in nature, fulfilling the role of a spe- study: Chemistry, Enology and Tourism, which cialised city extension. give it a small competitive edge over the others. In any case, the three universities –to which one The University of Lleida also started out by oc- might add the University of Vic– have conceived cupying an historic building on the central pe- the campus as a process of urban reform and riphery of the historic city (the former seminary, improvement of the old city districts, as well as situated along the old city walls to the north of one of regeneration of the city’s architectural her-

16 In the case of the Universitat de Lleida, see SALA et al., 2003; in that of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, see , 2003.

38 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

itage, at the same time as equipping the periph- Fig. 4 ery with new, specialised services. The three uni- Lleida University’s Cappont campus in 2000. versities have acted as economic16 and cultural motors, injecting a new lease of life into the en- tire urban fabric. As is logical, therefore, the ma- jor allies of the new universities have been the city councils, since it is they who have expressed the keenest interest in the urban success of the campuses.

10. Some questions concerning the Catalan university map in relation to the differential value of region

The standstill in student numbers and their fore- seeable decline in the next few years could lead to a crisis in the Catalan university map, as well as throwing a spotlight on the inadequacy of the criteria that have been applied until now. The ef- ceived new universities, and also in terms of the fort involved in constructing a teaching space strengthening of the system of intermediate has been enormous, but the deconcentration of cities, which are the true basis for development Catalan universities has been carried out with- in Catalonia. out a sufficiently clear differentiation of each uni- versity, according to its individual characteris- The main question is to consider whether all these tics, and before an equally comprehensive factors add up to sufficient justification for the cur- programme of research and technology transfer rent map, without a policy to favour the peripheral had been put in place. This article has highlight- universities at the expense of those which benefit ed the importance of the universities’ territorial from the importance and strength of the central commitment as a prime argument in favour of city in which they are located. A policy, for exam- their presence throughout the territory. This is, ple, according to which one or other degree undoubtedly, one of the major issues that will course might be assigned to the peripheral univer- need to be addressed over the coming years. sities because the latter were better equipped to From a purely economics-based approach to develop them than the universities in Barcelona, supply and demand, the decline witnessed in or which simply cut back the supply in the some degree courses would appear to indicate Barcelona universities in order to achieve a more the need for emergency surgery. From the re- even distribution of the demand throughout the gional and urban point of view, however, the im- Catalan territory. plantation of the Catalan universities is an irre- versible fact in the medium term, since it has There is one issue, however, which could prove to been very beneficial for the cities which have re- be decisive, depending on how Spain adapts to

39 CONEIXEMENT I SOCIETAT 04 ARTICLES

the European Higher Education Space. Although Barcelona universities, while the first-cycle degrees nobody is suggesting as much at present, it cannot are confined to the remaining Catalan universities. be ruled out that, given the excessive supply in From the regional point of view, such a strategy some degree courses, the second-cycle degree would roll back the whole process of decentralisa- supply might be concentrated in some or all of the tion carried out in recent years and jeopardise the

The Higher Technical degree course. The students’ revolt Although the site occupied by the School of Architecture against this solution, the subse- School is admittedly banal and in- of the Vallès (ETSAV): quent recognition of the centre as significant, the area of the Vallès is an example of engaged an independent school and its nevertheless an up-and-coming commitment to a region transfer twelve years ago to a new one and for years now has been building in the municipality of Sant striving for an institutional role to re- The UPC has raised certain ques- Cugat del Vallès are just some of flect the role that it in fact already tions which may serve to illustrate the episodes in the history of a plays. The Catalan pre-littoral corri- the dilemmas concerning the Cata- school which has been wrought out dor is currently the corridor linking lan university map. These ques- of improvisation and in the absence Europe to the Iberian peninsula and tions have been raised with particu- of any clearly-defined plan. the space through which the major lar acuity at the three schools infrastructures pass. The Vallès is distributed among the towns of Vi- In the centre’s lifetime so far, its the shoulders of Barcelona; the Val- lanova i la Geltrú, Manresa and chief endeavour has been to take lès’s up-market neighbourhood is Sant Cugat del Vallès, the centres advantage of the size of the school Sant Cugat and its popular areas of which for some years have been in order to provide teaching which Sabadell, Terrassa and Rubí are the most active and concerned is more tailored to the individual Catalonia’s biggest industrial areas, about their future. In particular, the student and relatively alternative the location of choice for Catalo- Higher Technical School of Archi- compared to that available in the nia’s hi-tech industries. In institu- tecture of the Vallès (ETSAV) four School of Architecture of Barce- tional terms, however, it is a frag- years ago took stock of the risks lona. The location of the School, its mented area, lacking leadership confronting ita. aterritorial nature (exacerbated by and interlocutors, a territory of the poor communications), its lack of future which, like its School of Ar- ETSAV is the result of a process of critical mass and the isolation or chitecture, is an insipid space deconcentration of the School of low visibility of the institution led to which lacks a forward plan. Architecture of Barcelona at a time the need being raised of the School when demand was very high. It was being put firmly on the physical The Metropolitan Architecture Cam- originally set up in a series of sheds and university map of Spain, trans- pus project proposed by ETSAV on land belonging to the joint mu- forming the site it occupies into a was an offer to take on the role of in- nicipal association of the two towns campus and giving a broad frame tellectual and university instrument. of Sabadell and Terrassa to teach of relevance to the whole opera- in carrying out the project of the the initial years of the Architecture tion. area. All over the world, the contem- a This project for a Metropolitan Architecture Campus was drawn up by a team headed by the Director, Ricard Pié, and consisting of Pere Riera, Assistant Di- rector and Head of Studies; Carles Llop, Assistant Director and Head of Cultural and International Affairs; Joan Puig Domenech, Assistant Director and Head of Research and Student Affairs; Joan Lluís Zamora , Assistant Director and Head of Academic Affairs and Curator, and Josep Ramon Fernàndez, Secretary.

40 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

porary city bears a greater resem- public administration and the need intermediate cities and the land- blance to what is happening along- to modernise the building sector. scape. In relation to technology side the School of Architecture of transfer, the School proposed that it the Vallès than to the «celebrated» Given the nature of the School, its should act as a centre providing city as represented by the munici- commitment to the area had the consultancy and assistance to terri- pality of Barcelona. Opting for a di- potential to develop into an avant- torial administrations and agents, rect involvement of the School in its garde architectural project incorpo- particularly with regard to the major surrounding area was therefore not rating all the elements which make issues affecting the Vallès: the tech- a localist project, but rather a up the world of the university. ET- nology park, the TGV and the trans- chance to reflect on the universal SAV’s Metropolitan Campus project formation of the B30. Finally, re- characteristics of the construction translated these challenges into garding the physical presence of of metropolitan areas from a stand- four categories: academic, re- the campus, it proposed to com- point of commitment to local issues. search, technology transfer and plement the classrooms with a physical presence. From the aca- space for research, technology In the Vallès are to be found many of demic point of view, the School transfer and accommodation and the architectural and urbanistic con- proposed to cater for its surround- social areas for the academic com- flicts which affect society: these ing territory – through cooperation munity. problems include: the disperse agreements and other agreements forms of urban growth; the uncer- with the regional governments – The aim of the School in drawing up tainties surrounding intermediate and to use the territory as material this project was not to ensure its cities; the urbanistic explosion of for its practical training of students own survival; rather it believed that small towns; the crisis of the rural in exchange for critical reflection the commitment to the surrounding environment; the demands to pre- and proposed solutions. With re- area expressed in it brought added serve distinctive local landscapes; gard to education and the new de- value to its university proposal, one the destruction of the architectural gree subjects, the School offered to which would contribute to a gen- heritage and existing buildings; the act as a centre for the training of uine decentralisation of the univer- voracious appetite of infrastructures professionals of modern territorial sity. The emergence of a plan for a swallowing up the territory; the in- government – as experts at the possible new architecture and dependence of the major strategic service of public administration – building campus in the Universal installations within the region and and as managers of territorial con- Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004 the requirements of space for activi- struction – as expert building works Àrea, promoted by the Barcelona ties and amenities. Added to these, managers. As for research, the City Council and the Polytechnic are the problems of housing, the ba- School put itself forward as a think- University of Catalonia has altered nality of the architecture that is be- tank to address the problems expe- the basic premises of that project ing built, difficulties of regional gov- rienced by its surrounding area, and will force to rethink the whole ernment, the lack of an expert such as the fuzzy city, the system of model.

economic, political and social investment made former’s physical occupation of space in the latter. thus far. At a time when difference is being blurred by global- isation, the university’s commitment to its territory, It is clear that the relationship between the universi- especially in the case of those universities con- ty and its territory cannot be confined merely to the ceived simply as a programme for the deconcen-

41 CONEIXEMENT I SOCIETAT 04 ARTICLES

tration of demand, constitutes a key element in dif- also the ability of the peripheral universities to capi- ferentiating their planning. The Catalan university talise on their peripheral territorial situation as well map needs to be reaffirmed as a bold project of uni- as their commitment to their surrounding area, versity decentralisation which, in the first instance, making these features one of the hallmarks of their will affect the conditions of supply in Barcelona, but quality.

42 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA

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