Urban efflorescences of the global and the local: An analysis of the territory of Gipuzkoa (Spain)

Abstract

[EN] The present study deals with the changes generated in the last decades by the increasing globalization in order to discern its influence on the urban structure of Gipuzkoa. The incidence of globalization in the processes of urban transformation is perceived, on the one hand, in the tendency towards the concentration of economic activities and, on the other, in the stimulus received by the local level and by the specialization, as generators of urban concentration. The urban forms that have arisen in this territory as a result of the global exposure present a varied typology as a consequence of the multiple scopes and scales in which they have been developed. Far from pretending to cover them all, the present study analyses a sample of urban processes and effects that have taken place in the territory of Gipuzkoa in the last decades, such as: science and technology parks, specialized networks around local products, processes of museification of industrial and rural environments, or expansion of the tourism services network. The study of these processes will attend both to their particular urban manifestation and to their territorial incidence, through the use of diverse sources and techniques to obtain a map in which they can be studied together. The resulting map of the sum of the different indicators will reveal characteristic spatial patterns of this centrality associated to the effect exercised by the sphere of the global over the local.