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Cities are complex systems requiring urban design models that balance order and disorder. Collective creativity initiatives engage citizens in these processes, empowering bottom-up approaches that prioritize people and social well-being within urban development. This paper investigates an 'Urban Laboratory' as a case study, examining the potential of collective creativity to address urban complexity. The successful and ongoing project 'El Campo de Cebada' in Madrid, Spain, demonstrates how a community transformed a vacant lot into a vibrant social hub. The phases of this study include case selection, data collection, data analysis, and presentation of the results. This study identifies key enabling factors, including agents, management, social dynamics, infrastructure, and actions. These insights offer a methodological framework for designing future collaborative, resilient, and inclusive urban spaces, addressing the complex needs of communities within our cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the visual representation of "the urban people" by the Spanish leftwing populist party Unidas Podemos (UP) during the campaign for regional elections in Madrid in 2021. The political environment was characterised by increasing polarisation and the hyper-leadership of two candidates, right-wing Isabel Díaz Ayuso and UP's national leader Pablo Iglesias. In this context, UP employed a diverse range of images and audiovisual material with a specific focus on the urban dimension. This paper explores how the populist logic and societal split--the people vs. the elite--deployed by UP are visually represented and connected with the urban space. Drawing on the central role of images in politics, this paper contributes to the emerging scholarship on the visual and spatial dimensions of populism by (a) exploring the connections between populist imaginary, space, and the visual; (b) advancing an empirical analysis of the image of "the people" in a left-wing political party; and (c) connecting the imaginary of populism to its geo-graphical dimension, stressing both the urban and class divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the unequal effect of Airbnb on the spatial organisation of economic activity in Madrid, Spain. Using establishment-level data from Madrid City Council and consumer-facing information from this short-term rental company, we find that Airbnb reshapes the urban space by encouraging tourist-oriented businesses, defined as businesses where tourists spend more than locals, at the expense of businesses primarily oriented to locals. These findings prove that short-term rentals do displace not only the local population but also resident-oriented businesses. Ultimately, our findings remain solid regardless of how we measure short-term rental activity and are not influenced by the growth of e-commerce or gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the analysis of green spaces of urban and peri-urban borders, this paper puts into practice a methodology designed for the analysis of green areas and peri-urban spaces as green infrastructures, but from a multifunctional and integrating perspective, as it is stated in the European Strategy for Green Infrastructures and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development goals. The deadline for implementing European legislation in this area means that strategic plans are being developed at local and regional level. In Spain there are municipal and regional strategies already developed and implemented but the national strategy has not yet been approved. To this end, the development of monitoring and evaluation tools such as the one presented in this article, can help not only in local decision-making, but also in the establishment of common criteria to help assess its future evolution. This research analyses the large peri-urban parks located in the southwest of the Community of Madrid (Spain). The evaluation is carried out from a local to a regional scale applying multifunctionality criteria to the planning, design, execution, maintenance and resilience phases. From the point of view of landscape structures, the findings of this study reflect a high environmental and social services delivery value, which makes it possible to understand the need to create networks to integrate the peri-urban spaces into the city and to attend to and understand the needs of all actors involved: citizens, political leaders, municipal technicians and private companies, providing them a common vision that improves the future of these spaces. This makes them core areas from which to design strategic plans for natural infrastructure and improvement of biodiversity in the urban area, being, likewise, an example that can be extrapolated and applied to large cities whose urban areas are adjoined and where peri-urban parks can be the starting point for designing supramunicipal strategies for open spaces. Based on these results we can conclude that south-west Madrid provides the ideal conditions for implementing a supra-municipal strategy for green infrastructures which, starting with its large forest parks, showcases the periurban areas which connect them with the urban green network. The Móstoles Green Network and Bosquesur are two strategic projects which, together with the forest parks, constitute a working framework based on which the Supra-municipal Strategy for Open Spaces in South-west Madrid can be devised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last three decades, the most populated Spanish cities have experienced significant spatial, social, and economic changes. The new urban economies have played an essential role in the acceleration of such transformations, entailing a range of both positive and negative impacts at the spatial, social, economic, and environmental levels. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of how the advancement of the globalization and deindustrialization processes has encouraged social polarization in the cities of Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, as well as a significant increase in intra-urban socioeconomic residential segregation. The article concludes by arguing that the increase in levels of social inequality and residential segregation reflects the trend towards polarized urban models, which reproduce in urban space the differences observed in the social structure. • Large Spanish cities have experienced significant changes due to globalization and deindustrialization processes. • The advancement of structural processes has led the emergence of a polarized occupational that tends towards greater wage inequality. • Social inequality has become a structural phenomenon in Spanish global cities • Residential segregation has increased due to the gentrification and touristification of urban centres and the suburbanization of poverty. • This dynamic indicates the emergence of polarized urban spaces, which reproduce in the territory the differences observed in the social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The XXth century gateway cities in Europe, such as Madrid, have followed and in-depth population readjustment, due to the arrival of immigrants from all over the world. This readjustment has left traces in the public spaces of the city; and the media have noted this phenomenon as well. This paper aims at analysing the superdiversity present in Lavapiés, through two different and complementary methodologies: the analyses of the Linguistic Landscape and of press corpora. The analysis of the landscape of the territory will be conducted through a corpus of images or Linguistic Cartography that includes samples of multilingualism present in the area. The press corpora contain news stories, interviews and articles on immigration. These analyses will provide a better picture of the area, in terms of diversity. This paper is part of the Post-conference Special Issue on Language and Migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women constitute a particularly vulnerable subgroup of people living homeless, with their own set of circumstances and life histories that are different from men in the same situation. In this paper, we present the results of a longitudinal study on the situation, needs, characteristics, and process of change among women in a homeless situation in Madrid (Spain). This study involved 136 homeless women who were spending the night at shelters, drop-in centers, on the street, or in public spaces. Data was collected through structured interviews conducted every 6 months for a total of 3 years. Throughout that period of time approximately half of the interviewed leaves the most extreme situation of homelessness. One in four interviewees gained access to independent accommodation, although in most cases this did not mean that they were no longer in a position of residential exclusion. The logistic regression analyses performed suggested that the variables with the closest correlation to improved accommodation were: receiving stable government economic benefits, obtaining income from work, not having Spanish nationality, not having a disability and having suffered fewer stressful life events at baseline, as well as a better perceived state of health. However, with regard to access to independent accommodation, the most closely-related variables were receiving stable government economic benefits and obtaining an income from work. Public Policy Relevance Statement: This longitudinal study showed that approximately half of the women living homeless interviewed in Madrid leaves the most extreme situation of homelessness during a 3-year follow-up period. The most significant factors in improving accommodation were receiving government benefits or income from work, having suffered fewer stressful life events, not having a disability and having better perceived health. The variables with the closest correlation to access to independent accommodation were receiving government benefits or obtaining a job. Data obtained can be useful for policy makers design programs to support women living homeless in the processes aimed at improving their situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial distribution of commercial activities is vital to support healthy lifestyles and to achieve livable public spaces and environmental, social and economic sustainability in our cities. However, commercial activities require a constant flow of expenditure for their own viability. As a result, understanding the spatial and temporal distribution of expenditure is fundamental, although the lack of detailed, complete data sources has impeded this task until now. Bank card data paves the way for a new urban geography of expenditure, thanks to its fine spatial and temporal granularity along with the uniform coverage of all commercial sectors. In this paper, we analyze temporal, spatial, and spatiotemporal distributions of expenditure at the intraurban scale of the city of Madrid (Spain), combining spatial statistical tools (Getis-Ord General for global autocorrelation and Getis-Ord Gi* hot spot analysis for local autocorrelation) with k-means cluster analysis and spatiotemporal tools (Time Series Clustering analysis and Temporal Hot Spot Analysis). Our analysis confirms the strong center-periphery gradient described in previous literature, but with a CBD integrated by distinct specialized areas. The paper demonstrates that bank card data has a great potential to support a new geography of expenditure that could strengthen decision-making in planning and retailing. [Display omitted] • Bank card data supports novel, improved, geographical analysis of expenditure. • Spatial and temporal granularity gain detail, also disaggregated by sector. • Center-periphery gradient patterns, but a greater complexity within the CBD. • Spatiotemporal analyses uncover areas with similar expenditure across time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades of sprawl and car-dependent urban developments, especially on the peripheries of metropolitan areas, new policies are being oriented towards more efficient and sustainable mobility. In the process of change towards more sustainable mobility patterns in peripheral areas, commuter railways must play a predominant role because of their capacity and speed. The main aim of this paper is to analyse commuter rail stations' catchment areas (SCAs) to identify typologies of these nodes in large metropolitan areas as a key step in proposing strategies for making mobility much more sustainable, both in the medium and proximity scales, by promoting soft mobility towards stations, a strategy that will facilitate commuters' use of daily rail transport. The method proposed is based on a twofold clustering analysis. The first is to consider urban-planning variables to detect consolidated stations; the second is to use both public space and land-use variables to characterise the quality of the urban environment for walking/cycling. These methods are applied in the metropolitan area of Madrid and offer some key insights. The results show that different typologies are found – from consolidated, dense and mixed-use SCAs, with large residential developments, to low-density SCAs in sprawl areas or low consolidated mixed-use SCAs with large parking spaces, following the park-and-ride model, among others. This identification of SCAs' typologies is key for policy makers to propose different strategies, which could be small projects oriented towards improving public spaces promoting soft mobility, or deeper changes that require a re-densification process in the stations' surroundings, breaking with the rigid definition of transit-oriented developments and adapting the decisions taken to each context. • We identify typologies of commuter rail stations' catchment areas (SCAs) in the metropolitan area of Madrid. • This is a key step in proposing strategies for sustainable mobility. • A twofold clustering analysis is proposed, considering first, urban planning and then, public space and land-use variables. • We found typologies such as dense and mixed-use SCAs or low consolidated SCAs following the park-and-ride model. • The identification of SCAs' typologies is key for policy makers, breaking with the rigid definition of TODs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, cities have witnessed a surge in micromobility services that offer flexible mobility options for citizens on an as-needed basis, such as for covering the first/last mile connection of their trips. Although these services have known benefits, including reduced CO2 emissions and less public space required for parking, there is still insufficient understanding of their common dynamics and usage, which can support decision-making in the quest for allocating new mobility infrastructure, like mobility hubs. In this paper, we propose a methodology to identify potential mobility hub locations based on the common associated spatial factors with the ridership of different micromobility services (station-based bike-sharing, dockless moped-style scooter-sharing and scooter-sharing services) in Madrid, Spain. We identify the common associated spatial factors with micromobility usage (e.g. bike stations' density, commercial land use and cycling infrastructure) and train linear models to explore which dependent variables represents better a "common ridership" of multiple micromobility services while fitting better that data. Subsequently, we test our models in a different area to identify potential hotspots for suggested locations. Findings show that considering micromobility ridership altogether using principal component analysis provides better ridership estimations in the test areas. The methodology has the potential to be replicable in other cities and guide decision-making processes for searching potential mobility hub locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of educational audio-visual materials has recently become popular. It is an innovative and entertaining practice, which can reach millions of people through social networks and YouTube. For this reason, this specific was designed for students enrolled in the following three modules: The Spanish political system, public administration in Spain, and institutions and decision-making structures in both the of joint degrees in law and political science and in public management and economic sciences, as well as degrees in public management and degrees in political science. Educational audio-visual materials were co-designed and co-created to define a Municipal Council, its workings and its organization. This was a three phased experiment. In the first, under the supervision of teachers, students developed five videos showing how Municipal Councils work. This allowed university students to become involved in a collaborative learning activity through which they acquired a series of important skills for future use, in addition to reinforcing their learning by participating in creation of digital teaching material, and also establishing a new teaching methodology consisting of learning-by-doing. In the second, professors and students attended CEIP Severo Ochoa Primary School in Madrid showing videos and playing two practical games, thus promoting knowledge transfer. In the third, the teachers evaluated the impact of this activity and the degree of satisfaction of university and primary school students. The result was positive, because not only was an educational innovation successfully implemented, but also a large part of objectives were achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how a holistic combination of three components, society, art, and architecture, can contribute to the successful revitalisation of derelict buildings and, at the same time, improve the well-being of the users of reclaimed spaces. The author uses a case study of a playground designed by the artist Iza Rutkowska in cooperation with children in a specific location at the Intermediae Matadero centre in Madrid. The centre is located in a revitalised warehouse in the complex of former municipal slaughterhouses, built at the beginning of the 20th century. The analysis of Iza Rutkowska's work is conducted against the background of broader analyses of the elements of the triad and the conditions required for them to enter into dialogue with each other. Their synergic combination is one of the factors that can have a positive impact on the regeneration of even such alien spaces as former industrial buildings. The users' creative activities fill space with new meanings and turn it into a place perceived as good. At the same time, the effects go beyond the walls of the redeveloped buildings, positively influencing the well-being of the users and creating social relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moped-style scooters are one of the most popular systems of micro-mobility. They are undoubtedly good for the city, as they promote forms of environmentally-friendly mobility, in which flexibility helps prevent traffic build-up in the urban centers where they operate. However, their increasing numbers are also generating conflicts as a result of the bad behavior of users, their unwarranted use in public spaces, and above all their parking. This paper proposes a methodology for finding parking spaces for shared motorcycle services using Geographic information system (GIS) location-allocation models and Global Positioning System (GPS) data. We used the center of Madrid and data from the company Muving (one of the city's main operators) for our case study. As well as finding the location of parking spaces for motorbikes, our analysis examines how the varying distribution of demand over the course of the day affects the demand allocated to parking spaces. The results demonstrate how reserving a relatively small number of parking spaces for scooters makes it possible to capture over 70% of journeys in the catchment area. The daily variations in the distribution of demand slightly reduce the efficiency of the network of parking spaces in the morning and increase it at night, when demand is strongly focused on the most central areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Displacements within urban spaces have attracted particular interest among researchers. We examine the journeys that happen in the Madrid Community considering 24 travel typologies and 1390 administrative areas. From an origin–destination (OD) matrix, four classes of major flows are characterised through coarse-graining: hotspot–non-hotspots, non-hotspot–hotspots, hotspots–hotspots, non-hotspot–non-hotspot. In order to make comparisons between them with respect to spatial and temporal patterns, several statistical tests are performed. The spatial activity as well as transition probabilities between administrative zones are also analysed. The mobility network's topology is examined (some parameters such as maximal connected components, average degree, betweenness, and assortativity as well as the k-cores are checked). A model describing the formation of links between zones (existence of at least one trip between them) is constructed based on certain measures of affinity between areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'articolo intende esplorare, attraverso il resoconto di una ricerca empirica sugli spazi femministi dei contesti urbani tra Roma e Madrid, una proposta di intreccio tra Participatory Action Research e Intersezionalità. Per iniziare a gettare le basi su cui si è sviluppata la ricerca, l'articolo traccia brevemente la genealogia della ricerca partecipativa e, dall'altro lato, l'incontro con l'intersezionalità. In seguito, l'articolo esplora questa intersezione attraverso tre prospettive empiriche: la posizionalità; l'intreccio tra PAR e intersezionalità nella pianificazione della ricerca con le partecipanti; l'intreccio nell'analisi dei dati e nella diffusione dei risultati. Tutti e tre gli aspetti sembrano indicare alcuni elementi ricorrenti: la PAR, informata da un approccio intersezionale, permette l'espressione della voce di una serie di soggetti, superando la possibilità di espressione che alcune strutture di potere sociale precludono; l'approccio partecipativo rompe il monopolio della produzione di conoscenza da parte dell'accademia, che è spesso maschile, bianca, occidentale, eterosessuale, cis, abile, aprendo a contro-narrazioni agite dai soggetti stessi che incarnano posizioni subalterne; se da un lato questo approccio non risolve lo squilibrio di potere tra ricercatore e partecipanti e il differenziale di potere che l'intersezione di alcuni assi produce, dall'altro permette di portare continuamente in primo piano il nodo del potere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles is the property of Asociacion de Geografos Espanoles and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Principles of sustainability defend compactness, density and diversity as main characteristics of the optimal development of cities. These factors support public transport efficiency, economic activity, accessibility to equipments and services, proximity and walkability of streets and social exchanges in open public spaces. The Covid-19 pandemic crisis has called into question these factors perceived as booster of infections. However, dense and compact cities can also be the synonym of a more efficient provision of services, along with solidarity networks and creative solutions to fight the sanitary and economic crisis. Based on Alexander's (1965) concepts of 'tree' and 'semi-lattice', this study aims to identify areas in the urban tissue that could be self-sufficient, that is functionally autonomous to manage epidemics from the neighbourhood scale. Encouraging healthier lifestyles during lockdown is fundamental for social resilience. What alternative spatial approach to fighting epidemics could perform better? How could an "intermediate confinement" based on self-sufficiency and the promotion of healthier environments become a major priority for action? The analysis of Madrid (Spain) offers a suitable case study due to its density, diversity and high contagiousness during the Covid-19 crisis, revealing also some issues to apply such 'intermediate confinement' strategy, due to major spatial imbalances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on spatial analysis and planning instruments review, presents some of the problems in green spaces planning in Madrid (Spain) throughout the 20th century. Three paradigmatic cases are studied. A profile of each system is presented, describing the background of the urban project, the planning evolution and the characteristics of the current situation. Urban Green Spaces (UGS) provisions of each zone were analyzed and compared. The work focused on the neighborhood level to better understand the critical factors behind the success or failure of UGS planning to determine what system is the most resilient to planning and management changes. The results show that the green structure of the three zones was defined in their respective master plans, but planning was not respected in any of the three cases studied. It appears that the most important factor affecting UGS systems is the building pressure on the territory planned. Guaranteeing the public access and use of such spaces is a very effective planning measure, as well as taking into account natural areas existing, such as forest areas and rivers. This is a strength of planning that helps authorities to design relevant UGS planning, which can then be effectively applied. • Green spaces are urban areas especially sensitive to non-compliance of urban master plans. • Guaranteeing the public use of urban green spaces is a very effective measure to maintain the proposed urban planning. • To preserve urban green system, a strength of planning is taking into account natural areas existing (e.g. forest, rivers). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Cultivated lands have undergone a shift towards intensification and increased productivity, favoring provisioning services at the expense of regulating and cultural services. Cultivated lands have rarely been researched as a provider of cultural services. Objectives: The overarching goal of this study is to assess sense of place across cultivated lands. To do so, we used participatory mapping to elicit public knowledge of the past and present coverage of agricultural areas, as well as to reveal the public sense of place attached to cultivated lands and perceptions about future land-use pathways. Methods: This study was conducted in an agrarian and rural region of SE Madrid (Spain), where we did ecosystem service participatory mapping workshops with key stakeholders related to the agrarian sector: farming professionals, land-use decision-makers and planners and other local actors. Results: We identified linkages between cultivated lands and sense of place as a key cultural service. The locations most pinpointed for its sense of place overlapped with cultivated lands. The future land-use pathways that showed the highest agreement between the likelihood and interest in their promotion were the increases in green and/or protected areas and orchards. Extensive crops and urban areas the land-use pathways with the highest dissonance. Conclusions: The results encourage land planners and researchers to approach landscape values in relation to the sense of place. We concluded that cultivated lands present a sense of place, and this link has the possible to root society in agricultural landscape through the establishment of belongingness, stewardship and care connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agroecological movement is gaining presence in urban spaces, transcending the rural areas where it originated and revealing the need for an alliance between both worlds. As the social justice dimension is at the core of agroecology, one would expect that designing urban food systems with an agroecological approach would prioritize deprived neighbourhoods. However, this is not happening. To overcome it and address food poverty, we explore spatial design principles inspired by agroecology, to transform production and consumption along the urban-rural transect. We developed a methodology and applied it to a vulnerable neighbourhood (Bellas Vistas in Madrid, Spain), to outline a network of productive spaces and collective facilities for an agroecological transition that overcomes the middle-class bias commonly observed in Alternative Food Networks. It defines mechanisms to connect local needs with available resources, considering self-supporting communities, empty plots and underused spaces and buildings, as well as institutional policies and plans. This way, the traditional assistance approach can be replaced by a structural solution that disrupts dominant relationships bringing food sovereignty a step closer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic and the fear experienced by some of the population, along with the lack of mobility due to the restrictions imposed, has modified the social behaviour of Spaniards. This has had a significant effect on the hospitality sector, viewed as being an economic and social driver in Spain. From the analysis of data collected in two of our own non-probabilistic surveys (N ~ 8400 and N ~ 2000), we show how, during the first six months of the pandemic, Spaniards notably reduced their consumption in bars and restaurants, also preferring outdoor spaces to spaces inside. The restaurant sector has needed to adapt to this situation and, with the support of the authorities (regional and local governments), new terraces have been allowed on pavements and public parking spaces, modifying the appearance of the streets of main towns and cities. This study, focused on the city of Madrid, analyses the singular causes that have prompted this significant impact on this particular city, albeit with an uneven spatial distribution. It seems likely that the new measures will leave their mark and some of the changes will remain. The positive response to these changes from the residents of Madrid has ensured the issue is being widely debated in the public arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This empirical study investigates large urban park cooling effects on the thermal comfort of occupants in the vicinity of the main central park, located in Madrid, Spain. Data were gathered during hot summer days, using mobile observations and a questionnaire. The results showed that the cooling effect of this urban park of 125 ha area at a distance of 150 m could reduce air temperatures by an average of 0.63 °C and 1.28 °C for distances of 380 m and 665 meters from the park. Moreover, the degree of the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) index at a distance of 150 meters from the park is on average 2 °C PET and 2.3 °C PET less compared to distances of 380 m and 665 m, respectively. Considering the distance from the park, the correlation between occupant perceived thermal comfort (PTC) and PET is inverse. That is, augmenting the distance from the park increases PET, while the extent of PTC reduces accordingly. The correlation between these two factors at the nearest and furthest distances from the park is meaningful (p-value < 0.05). The results also showed that large-scale urban parks generally play a significant part in creating a cognitive state of high-perceived thermal comfort spaces for residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]