The urban renewal proccess in seville (1956-1975)
This essay analyzes the urban renewal process in Seville from 1956-1975 during the operation of the Land and Urban Planning Act. Three renewal options were available to the Spanish governmen:
1) to maintain the center of Seville as the traditional symbolic core of the city by moderating the growth of new CBD functions without, however, stifling them.
2) to maintain the center as a "museum", by excluding completely new CBD fuctions.
3) to facilitate the growth of the CBD at the extreme cost of historic center.
The argument of this essay is that the authoritarian Franco regime only seriously considered the third option and acted, in response to the opportunities of rapid economic growth, in ways which deeply harmed the center of the city. Only with the first democratic local government and with a very diferent environment this option was abandoned and sub-stituted by the first one. The essay is divided into two parts, the first sets the theorical framework of the analysis; the second describes critically the history of the renewal effort.
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RevistaUniversity of Pennsylvania