Although the recent housing boom & bust in Spain has triggered significant transformations in its urban fabric, the geographical dimensions of this economic phenomenon and its spatial impacts on the local urban structure have not yet been described in depth. Following the latest published data from CORINE Land cover (2012), this study undertakes a dynamic multi-scale spatial analysis of data representing urban land cover over a 22-year span, contributing to the understanding of four main issues: (i) the total amount of change, (ii) its proportion in comparison with the initial stage of geographical distribution, and the (iv) the implications for the metropolitan and regional urban layout.
This quantification describes the outlying regional structure of Spain’s urbanization process during the last decades in Europe, showing great acceleration and a significant transformation in land use patterns, as well as major differences in rates and components on smaller scales, using an integrated growth index.