Effects of the urban sprawl and consequences to social sustainability. An analysis of the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona

Abstract

The breakdown of the Ford production system and the application of new technologies have led to a change in the structure of the territory: the city’s boundaries have been extended and space segmentation has increased. In the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona – MRB –, the compact city model coexists today with the urban sprawl, which is juxtaposed to the first one, creating a new global paradigm. This paper tries to answer several questions about the limits and possibilities of this new model in order to analyze the current situation of the urban sprawl areas of the MRB from the perspective of sustainability, with emphasis on its social dimension, thus contributing to the theoretical framework about the relationship between social sustainability and urban forms.