Uneven Redevelopment New Urban Policies and Socio-Spatial Fragmentation in Metropolitan Bilbao ★
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UNEVEN REDEVELOPMENT NEW URBAN POLICIES AND SOCIO-SPATIAL FRAGMENTATION IN METROPOLITAN BILBAO ★ Arantxa Rodríguez, Elena Martínez and Galder Guenaga Universidad del Païs Vasco-Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Bilbao, Spain Abstract Since the mid 1980s, European cities and regions urban renaissance. During the 1990s, Bilbao has have become increasingly concerned with followed on the tracks of other old industrial cities competitive restructuring and economic growth. adopting a revitalization strategy focused around This concern goes hand in hand with a rediscovery large-scale and emblematic redevelopment projects. of the central role of cities in the performance of The article discusses one of these projects, regional and national economies as a whole. But, in a Abandoibarra, a paradigmatic waterfront develop- context of radical transformation of production and ment that embodies the new logic of urban demand conditions globally, the performance of intervention.The first section of the paper presents cities is mediated by their capacity to lead a process an analysis of economic restructuring and socio- of competitive redevelopment. To meet the spatial fragmentation dynamics in the city in the last challenges posed by the changing global competitive two decades. The second section discusses changes climate, the policy agenda of many cities has been in urban policy-making locating Bilbao’s regeneration drastically reorganized. On the one hand, the search strategy in the context of the ‘New Urban Policies’. for growth has transformed urban revitalization in The third section focuses on emerging governance one of the main domains of urban intervention. On dynamics and the critical role of new governance the other, the new urban policy agenda is singularly institutions in the management of Abandoibarra’s framed in a language of competitiveness, improved redevelopment scheme. Finally, the fourth part of the efficiency, flexibility, entrepreneurship, partnership article attempts to provide an evaluation of the and collaborative advantage that underwrite the impact of the project, highlighting the shadows remaking of planning objectives, functions and behind what is presented as a new success story in instruments. urban revitalization. In this article, we examine the rise of new urban policies in Bilbao (Spain), a city where two KEY WORDS ★ Bilbao ★ new urban policies ★ decades of manufacturing decline and economic social and spatial polarization ★ urban renewal restructuring are gradually giving way to so-called Remaking the Fordist city: economic century, the city’s socio-economic and spatial restructuring and socio-spatial structure has been moulded primarily by the fragmentation in Bilbao changing requirements of manufacturing activity. The location determinants of the propulsive sectors Industrialization and urban development of the first round of industrial development, iron ore extraction and export, prefigured a social and For more than a century, the dynamics of change in functional division of space along the axis of the metropolitan Bilbao have followed closely the cycles Nervión river that has only deepened over time of expansion and contraction of manufacturing (Urrutia, 1985; Martínez and Vicario, 1997). In the activities. From the early outbursts of Left Bank (Margen Izquierda: see Fig. 1), where the industrialization in the second half of the 19th mines and port facilities are located, the European Urban and Regional Studies 8(2): 161–178 Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications 0969-7764[200104]8:2; 161–178;018028 London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi 162 EUROPEAN URBAN AND REGIONAL STUDIES 8(2) Figure 1 Metropolitan Bilbao Functional Areas development of manufacturing followed by intense and the differential impact of economic crisis in the immigration transformed this area into the heart of 1970s (Escudero, 1985). On the other hand, industry and working class communities. In Bilbao, population growth, fuelled by a continuous flow of a new rationality of segregated functions and classes immigrants from disadvantaged Spanish regions, drove the development of residential and business created the basis for an extraordinary demographic locations for the industrial and financial bourgeoisie and physical expansion. Between 1950 and 1970, in the centre and working class neighbourhoods in population doubled (111 percent increase) in the the periphery. The Right Bank (Margen Derecha), eight largest municipalities1 of metropolitan Bilbao initially a recreational and summer residence area and tripled in the Left Bank (182 percent increase). for the city’s upper classes, was gradually Population growth continued during the 1970s but transformed into a residential centre of higher at a much lower rate (14 percent). This trend was quality, up-market housing and, later on, tertiary accompanied by a frenzy of building in a context activities. dominated by the spontaneous activities of real estate After the impasse of the civil war, a decade of agents and a permissive government constrained by economic stagnation and political isolation of the rising demands, structural deficits and limited Francoist regime gave way to a period of accelerated material and financial resources (Terán, 1999). An industrialization and urban development in the ‘urbanism of tolerance’, subservient to the interests 1950s and 60s. Together with Madrid and and pressures of promoters and developers, turned Barcelona, Bilbao became a major pole of attraction speculation into the key dynamic of rapid for both capital and labour. Capital investments in urbanization (Perez-Agote, 1978; Leonardo, 1989). this ‘second’ wave of industrialization built upon The combination of accelerated growth and and intensified the city’s specialization on heavy untamed urbanism favoured the reproduction of manufacturing and metal products, a factor that socio-spatial segregation patterns in the would bear critically on the early loss of dynamism metropolitan area. The industrial and working class European Urban and Regional Studies 2001 8(2) RODRIGUEZ et al.: UNEVEN REDEVELOPMENT 163 character of the Left Bank was accentuated by the Manufacturing decline and changes in the expansion of manufacturing and port activity and by hierarchy of sectors have gone hand in hand with a the concentration of immigrant labour in this area. profound reorganization of labour market and In the municipality of Bilbao, the growth of income opportunities. In Bilbao, unemployment centrality functions associated with the rates jumped from 2.3 percent in 1975 to 26 percent concentration of financial activities and advanced in 1986; a decade later, unemployment figures services in the central business district was the most continued to be at an alarming 27 percent, but the important dynamic. But the central district also return of economic dynamism in the last half of the retained its residential character for higher income 1990s drove this rate down to 16 percent in 1998. groups while the working classes settled in the However, falling unemployment rates are closely periphery of the municipality. The growth of the linked to the growing casualization of labour Right Bank was primarily tied to its role as the relations and the extension of precarious jobs that residential centre for the new middle classes and has institutionalized vulnerability and increased the higher income groups. However, throughout the risks of exclusion for large segments of the 1970s, some of the Right Bank municipalities started population. The extent to which this trend to attract an important share of expanding tertiary permeates the reorganization of the labour market activities, thus reinforcing the social and functional in the city is reflected in the rising proportion of divisions of the metropolitan area. non-tenured contracts that in 1998 amounted to After two decades of intense growth, the almost 40 percent of all contracts (Egailan, 1999). metropolitan economy was badly hit by the crisis of Thus, while unemployment remains the key variable Fordism and the restructuring of production and in explaining changing living conditions and social demand globally. Manufacturing activities, the exclusion dynamics, it reveals only the tip of an engine of growth during the expansive phase, now iceberg of uncertainty, instability and increasing risk led the dynamics of contraction and decline. for a growing share of the urban population. Between 1975 and 1996, metropolitan Bilbao lost almost half (47 percent) of its manufacturing jobs and the proportion of industrial employment dropped from 46 percent to 23 percent. Most of Changing patterns of socio-spatial segregation these losses took place in traditional Fordist and polarization industries such as shipbuilding, steel, chemicals and electrical equipment, dominated by large firms.2 Changes in the urban economy have not taken place The growth of tertiary activities during this period homogeneously inside the metropolitan area. On the helped offset partly the impact of industrial decline contrary, processes of socio-economic restructuring and after 1986 provided practically all net job unfold along the lines of existing social and growth. By 1996, the share of services in the city functional divisions of space. Table 2 reveals critical had grown from 42 percent to 65 percent, revealing differences in the distribution of employment a fundamental reorganization of the urban economy change for different sub-areas of the metropolitan and a shift in its specialization away from area. manufacturing