The
growing importance of strategic urban development
The
growing importance of strategic urban development
The last decade has seen an acceleration in the changes that affect cities, among which is principally the economic liberalisation deriving from the integration of Europe and the unstoppable process of globalisation, which has in turn obliged the traditional industries to restructure. Moreover, industrial society has been replaced by a new information society, thereby offering excellent opportunities to cities with respect to the generation and dissemination of innovation and knowledge.Most urban strategic plans direct their efforts at searching for and promoting the competitive benefits associated to advanced communications infrastructures, technology parks or business clusters.
Once the strategic plan has been completely defined, we have to encourage the involvement of all of these actors in its promotion and follow-up. To do this, we often have to constitute strategic partnerships.
We should underline the importance of the participation of the civilian population as an element of cohesion with respect to urban revitalisation initiatives. The implication of each and every one of the social and economic segments ensures the achieving of long-term objectives, thus justifying the often-important investments that have to be made on the shorter term.
The
metropolis as a competitive unit
Hong Kong and Singapore are the most obvious cases of cities that are prospering thanks to market globalisation and to the fact that competition is developing in a scenario where national borders have lost their importance.In this situation, the Basque Autonomous Community can generally be considered as a large metropolis which has already been christened with the name of "Euskopolis"; an economic and demographic nucleus with a natural area of influence encompassing the approximately five million inhabitants of its immediately surrounding area.
Metropolitan
Bilbao holds a privileged position as regards the processes of economic
integration and globalisation
After the years of relative decline that followed decades of economic superiority within both Spain and Europe, since the early 90s, the Bilbao metropolis has been experiencing a complex process of revitalisation mainly based on the determined public effort to find new economic activities and intensive collaboration between public and private partners.A junction for sea and land communications, Metropolitan Bilbao stands half-way between the Spanish and French markets and is the door to the European Union for transatlantic markets (mainly Latin-American), with whom they have strong historical and trading connections.
The
Bilbao metropolis has the same demographic tendencies as the main European
metropolitan areas
The near-million size of the population of the Bilbao metropolis is comparable to other important European nuclei such as Antwerp, Bologna or Helsinki. Like these cities, its population has decreased over recent years (a decrease of more than 40,000 inhabitants over the last fifteen years), partly brought about by economic decline, and partly by demographic tendencies.Another parallel migratory phenomenon is that which is taking place locally, between Bilbao and the other municipalities in the metropolitan area. Like other European and American metropolitan areas, the city centre is progressively losing demographic weight, thereby suffering relative depopulation in comparison to the outlying municipalities.
The rate of economic growth, higher than the Spanish and European average of recent years, would at least seem to guarantee a stabilisation of this tendency, along with generally higher levels of income and welfare, factors which will also have an influence on demographic tendencies.
High
economic growth guarantees that the revitalisation process will continue
The convergence of interest rates within the process of European Economic and Monetary Union proves that this growth has not been caused by inflationary tendencies, but has mainly been brought about by the private sector, and especially high business investment, which has represented 25% of the Basque GNP.The expansion process has seen itself strongly reflected on the job market, so that last year saw the creation of 8,600 new jobs in Bizkaia, mostly in the area of the Bilbao metropolis, therefore bringing down the unemployment rate in the province by 1.6% to 18.7% at the end of 1998.
During the second half of 1998, Basque exports suffered a drop, partly caused by the crisis in certain parts of Asia, Latin-America and Russia, but also partly due to the difficulty of maintaining the high growth rate of the last three years.
The
civilian population is starting to feel the effects of the revitalisation
process
Metropolitan Bilbao is not clearly considered as a centre of attraction for new residents any more than other cities, although this Opinion has improved considerably with respect to the previous Opinion Poll. Hence, 37% of the those polled believe that the Bilbao metropolis attracts many or a quite a lot of residents in comparison with other cities, against the 17% of 1997.There is an obvious rise in confidence as far as the economic future is concerned, undoubtedly boosted by the favourable results of 1998 and the progress made with respect to the regeneration process of the Bilbao metropolis.
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