The URBAN Community Initiative as a transformation issue for the practice of urban regeneration: The Spanish case

Abstract

The URBAN Community Initiative has been so far the most specific instrument of the
urban policy in the European Union. It was developed during two consecutive programming periods
of the Cohesion Policy (the period 1994-1999, under the name of URBAN, and the 2000- 2006, under
the name of URBAN II).
Its progress in Spain, as in other Member States, has made an important contribution to the practice
of urban regeneration. Its scope has been established by the country circumstances, which have
acted in accordance with the situation, limiting or fostering the introduction of the methodological
approach considered by this Community Initiative. From this awareness the paper analyzes the
contribution made by URBAN to the field of urban regeneration in Spain.
The research has been developed stemming from the contextualization of URBAN in the framework
of the EU urban policy, thus to characterize and understand its methodological elements and to
analyse, afterwards, its application to the Spanish case (through a general approach to the URBAN
programmes (1994-1999) and the development of case studies of the URBAN II programmes).
The analysis of the results achieved by the Spanish programmes has produced some conclusions
about the contribution made by URBAN to the Spanish context of urban regeneration and the lessons
that has entailed its implementation. These conclusions are proposed as a contribution to the current
discussion on the extension of the EU urban policy for the new budget period 2014-2020.