Continuidad y cambio en la revitalización del Bilbao metropolitano

Over the last two decades, metropolitan areas have been at the center of widespread reorganization. For some cities, the crisis of Fordism and the transition towards a so-called new regime of flexible accumulation have brought about systematic divestment in manufacturing activities, plant closures, environmental degradation, massive unemployment and rising poverty and marginality. The dynamics of productive reorganization, however, has not been the only factor shaping the fortunes of cities and regions; the specific character of national, regional and local state responses to the imperatives of structural change has also played a critical part. From this perspective, the innovation and reformulation of territorial policies, since the mid 1980, constitute a fundamental factor in understanding the strategies and possibilities for revitalisation in these areas. Against this background, this paper aims to explain recent trends in urban policy making in metropolitan Bilbao, one of the main industrial centers of Spain and also one of the most severely affected by manufacturing decline. It shows how critical policy innovations in urban planning developed over the last decade run parallel to dominant approaches in planning in other advanced industrial countries.