Local and Regional Planning in the Autonomous Community of Aragon: four decades of laws and plans for a dual urban system

Abstract

Over the last four decades, the Autonomous Community of Aragon has developed its own regional and urban planning legislation, which is highly conditioned by the characteristics of a clearly unbalanced urban population system. On the one hand, there are very large, unpopulated territories, with 545 municipalities (out of 731) with less than 500 inhabitants and many towns with a tendency to lose population. In contrast to this situation, in which urban planning is neither a priority nor a real need, we find more balanced medium-sized municipalities in dynamic areas due to their industrial or tourist activity, and a group of 11 small cities with more than 10 000 inhabitants and 2 medium-sized cities (the provincial capitals of Huesca and Teruel), which show a solvent urban planning trajectory, with an established ‘urban planning culture’. But above all, Zaragoza's status as the capital, Spain's fifth largest city, and its metropolitan area, a consolidated attractor of the Aragonese population, stand out. In tnis city, the considerable magnitude of urban developments and strategic and infrastructural operations can be explained in large part by the active participation of the state administration in the three town plans of the period analyzed in the article (1968, 1986 and 2001).