Spatial planning in the Brussels-Capital Region: Some notes about remodeling of the Spanish model

Abstract

Ten years after the crash of the Spanish real-estate bubble the authors start from the premise that the Spanish model of spatial planning has failed, and consider as inevitable and urgent the revision of the principles that sustain it since 1956. Comparative law is used here as a source of inspiration to criticise some of these principles, as the systematic approach of spatial planning toward the occupation of new territories by urbanization, or the assignment of land rights according to city models designed for the future that inevitably are of a speculative nature, instead of to be based on facts or objective circumstances obtained from the existing reality. The Spanish real estate bubble would not have reached this size without a spatial planning system based on speculative principles, which too often has ended up becoming an instrument to artificially modify the prices of land. The Belgian case shows that it is possible to use a simple and coherent planning system to intervene in urban dynamics with satisfactory results, while preventing the system corruption by avoiding its use for artificially modifying the land prices.