Abstract
Traditionally, medium-sized cities have been compact urban centres, which have also emerged as satellite nuclei within metropolitan areas of larger cities. However, urban dispersion models have led to growth in population and the increasing urbanisation of large cities’ peripheral areas. This article will analyse medium-sized cities in Spain, as well as their urban areas within the national urban network. Medium-sized cities will be defined herein, and their urban areas of influence will also be established. The increase and growth in area and population of the so-called medium-sized cities draws a new map of urban relationships. Empirical analysis will resort to a nuclear, demographic source, the population of urban areas. Source data will be analysed both statistically and cartographically. Finally, a spatial analysis of Spain’s urban network will be presented as the main method used to obtain results, with a characterisation of Spain’s urban system and the role of cities in such system being displayed. There is a trend which aims at re-balancing the permanent configuration of the country’s urban network. The article concludes with a typology of medium-sized cities regarding their relative position in the territory. This research contributes to the current scientific debate on the dynamics of urbanisation in the environment of medium-sized cities.
Highlights
Let’s take a driveThrough the sprawlThrough these towns they built to change [1]Medium-sized cities have been, generally speaking, regional nuclei which have played the role of a market, producing and—above all—distributing goods and services; they have structured the network of road and transport infrastructures and, very frequently, have managed a political and administrative unit
This research contributes to the discussion on the current dynamics of urbanisation in the environment of medium-sized cities
Cities are divided into monocentric, bicentric, polycentric and metropolitan urban areas
Summary
Let’s take a driveThrough the sprawlThrough these towns they built to change [1]Medium-sized cities have been, generally speaking, regional nuclei which have played the role of a market, producing and—above all—distributing goods and services; they have structured the network of road and transport infrastructures and, very frequently, have managed a political and administrative unit (in Spain, the so-called “province”). The definitions of ‘medium-sized city’ or ‘intermediate city’, reflecting its main territorial structuring role [5], are very diverse in the world. These are nuclei that act as a link between higher and lower urban levels, establish relationships with other cities and territories of the same hierarchical level, and act as intermediaries between the big city and rural spaces. Calls into question the true need for a final definition on this complex phenomenon with diffuse limits [5] In this sense, in this article, we understand the medium or intermediate city as follows:
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