Lock living: Urban sprawl in Mediterranean cities

Abstract

“Lock living” refers to the importance of security design, consumed as a commodity, in the new suburban residential landscapes of Mediterranean cities. This article summarizes the process of urban sprawl that has developed in the cities of Southern Europe in recent decades. It presents the main consequences of this evolution, regarding changes in residential landscape. Mediterranean cities have been historically characterised by the archetypal image of density, urban complexity and social diversity. However, the increasing development of urban sprawl shows a very different urban scenario. Metropolitan spaces along the edges of the motorways and orbital ring roads are developing the type of residential landscape that was, until not so long ago, exclusively associated with the cities of the Anglo-Saxon urban tradition. New low-density residential areas show the proliferation of territories manifesting the same morphological criteria in different cities. From a cultural perspective, these standardised landscapes mean the production of residential areas designed on the basis of a thematization of the American suburb. This iconographic display dresses them up as private-urban-ecological-thematic paradises, as a residential landscape that becomes image more than territory and, in this sense, a commodity. This commodification process refers both to the residential space and the inhabitants’ lifestyles as the domestic landscape, created by private security, clearly shows.