Intermediate Cities:Those Between Specific Territories and Global Spaces

Abstract

The paper seeks to highlight the transversal nature of the concept of the intermediate city and to add new
dimensions to classical ways of classifying and defining cities. From the concept of the medium-sized city,
which would seem to stress its demographic size and more quantitative aspects, the authors speak of having
moved on to the intermediate city, focussing now on the functions that these cities satisfy within their
immediate territories and on their vocation for articulating specific spaces through other nodes and territories
that lie within their relative vicinity. This is said to have allowed for the introduction of other more
dynamic and strategic aspects that, in turn, have brought along with them new possibilities for auto-affirmation
and have reinforced the city-region and its opening/consolidation to other scales. Quantitative and
qualitative analyses of intermediate cities have highlighted elements that show both their transversal nature
and their diversity, both of which have been analysed by the CIMES programme Intermediate cities and
world urbanisation. The programme was created in 1996 under the auspices of Lleida City Council (Lleida,
Spain), the International Union of Architects and UNESCO’s MOST programme.