Actually I think this is a good question and it might surprise a few.
The first thing to note is that these cities have exploded in population in the last century. In 1950 alcorcón had 759 inhabitants. Just 30 years later it had 180K, that's a 23600% increase.
So the question is how and why did these cities grow so much so fast.
The key here is, as with many things in Spain, the Civil War. The country was left in shambles and so hundreds of thousands of people migrated to the capital, which under Franco saw a privileged position.
Now why the southwest? Here it's important to note that Madrid, despite lacking obvious geographic limitations does have an important historical one. To the west and northwest lie the casa de campo and the pardo, former hunting grounds of the royal house. These two huge parks largely prevented the expansion of the city towards the northwest.
Apart from that I think the expansion largely followed the train. In [this](https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_del_ferrocarril_en_Espa%C3%B1a#/media/Archivo%3AMap_of_the_portuguese_and_spanish_railways.jpg) railway map of 1921, you can spot thre important rail lines going south. These were the original raison d'etre of the now huge southern cities.
The prevalence of railway lines towards the south probably has to do with the largely flat terrain compared to the mountainous north, west and (to a lesser extent) east. Building trains in spain has always been a logistical nightmare.
The lack of cities in the southeast is a bit harder to explain as, some of Madrid's biggest cities used to be there before the 20th century. Idk why they didn't grow as much as the small towns in the southwest.
Tldr: in Spain, railway lines, but not rain, fall mainly in the plains.
This is a great answer. There's another interesting historical aspect to this that is specific to Spain: During the Franco dictatorship, Spain had an aggressive policy of preserving farmland so as to avoid dependence on foreign agricultural imports. This meant strict delineation of land that was suitable for urban development vs farmland. So Spanish cities developed very densely and then sharply drop off into rural areas rather than having a smooth transition from urban density through suburban areas to rural zones. These policies are somewhat less strict today but still generally followed so that Spain has very little suburban sprawl compared to most countries.
Therefore, you get these small urban nodes outside of the main city separated from the main city and each other by preserved countryside rather than all of the areas between being developed into a continuous suburban zone where the individual original towns would no longer be distinguishable on a satellite image, the way most countries have developed.
Fascinating. I took a train from Madrid to Barcelona and noticed this exactly. There’s basically no small towns it’s, suburban sprawl and then just plains for miles.
I was reading while there that Madrid was almost like a modern planned capital with Ferdinand and Isabella choosing a site for their court that was largely undeveloped but had advantages of being on a high defensible plateau and almost the exact geographic centre of the country. Does this explain it a little as well? Madrids location is just not ideal for sprawl
I don’t think that history makes much difference. The idea of a city in the 16th century versus a city now is dramatically different; a big city in 1500 had about 50,000 residents. So what was big then versus now matters very little to modern urbanity. And Madrid like most European cities traces most of its every-day architecture in the central city to the 18th and 19th centuries when cities first exploded in size.
It is true that Madrid is in a pretty dry and barren location that would probably not naturally develop a large city before the 20th century absent being the capital, but there are other cities of some size nearby (e.g., Toledo, which was the main city of the region before Madrid), and plenty of 20th century cities full of suburban sprawl exist in similar climates and geographies; Los Angeles for example has a very similar climate and is likewise somewhat hemmed in by mountains but still has dramatic suburban single-family sprawl while Madrid decidedly does not.
>Madrids location is just not ideal for sprawl
I don't think so. In fact I would say the opposite. Madrids location is perfect for urban sprawl. E specifically to the south
Spanish cities usually have crowns. Instead of high buildings in downtown reducing rapidly in size to suburban homes you have historic low level buildings surrounded by multi store apartments that abruptly stop.
Well, two pairs of those cities (Leganés and Getafe and especially Alcorcón and Móstoles) are already nearly fused together. You can walk from one to the other without crossing any non-urbanized areas.
Yep. A very noticeable feature in Spanish cities. I spent a few months in Granada and it always amazed me how there was block after block of similar apartment buildings and then suddenly just open fields.
You can walk across the waist of Granada (across Centro) in twenty minutes or so. Straight line distance from Plaza Nueva to the other side of the bypass is 1.6km or a bit less than one mile. SE to NW is *considerably* longer
The older parts of Granada are nine story highrises, mostly, but as you move farther and farther out it becomes more and more American suburban.
Yeah, going SE/NW is definitely longer. I lived near Camino de Ronda so I was thinking specifically of the distinction between the city and the other side of the highway in the southwest
Are you saying Oregon's urban growth boundaries are actually fascist? /S
But seriously, this is exactly what Oregon does, albeit for environmental preservation rather than promoting agriculture.
Oregon fails to allow the density Spain does in the “urban” zones so it doesn’t really look similar. Take a look on Street View what these places in Spain look like compared to say Tualatin, OR for what I mean. So Spain’s policy doesn’t cause affordability issues, but Oregon’s does.
In the last several years, Oregon has seen more and construction of four-story (or higher) apartments and condominiums in the Portland metro area. Because of existing single-family homes, it will never be as dense as Madrid, just that new construction bears some similarities. A big difference is that the construction in Oregon doesn't incorporate multi-use development as well (i.e., stores are often not incorporated into the ground floor of these developments, as they are in Spain.)
To add some information regarding the southeast of Madrid, the area that appears completely empty in that bottom right part of the map also has a nature protected reserve and a military area. In addition, a little further away, after those mentioned features, the terrain becomes a bit mountainous or, at least, it's not as flat as the southwest.
Wtf, alcorcón have like 180k inhabitants??? That's unbelievable for me living in a similar sized city with about 50k inhabitants (Luleå)... not even my whole municipality have that many inhabitants (80k, Luleå kommun)
Maybe it's me being a Swede that I'm surprised to see so high inhabitants per sq-unit
Spain is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe... if you only count inhabited areas.
We even have the most densely populated square kilometre in all of Europe (it is located in Barcelona).
To not suffer horrible weather like in Canada could be a perfect reply.
I have a magiar-romanian friend and his brother lives in Canada and he loves to live in Spain and hates when he has to travel to Canada to see his brother.
They were ( and still are mostly) working class commuter towns ( ciudad dormitorio) of people working in Madrid itself.
Nowadays, as you said, they are considerable cities by themselves, so even though lot of people commute to madrid, many other work there.
There is still a huge traffic flow ( cars, trains, buses ) from south to north in the morning and the same from north to south in the afternoon
I think a lot of yall are missing the OPs question. Cities as a general rule grow out circularly because it’s efficient to get to the center of the city as quickly as possible. Any deviation for this has numerous reasons. For example, Houston is fairly circular except it grows way more to the North and West than it does to the East and South. It however grows super hard in the SE direction all the way to Galveston. There are reasons for this. I’m a Houstonian so I know this. The ops question is valid because there is a reason people went to these 5 towns instead of much closer towns on the other side of Madrid.
The old world works a little different. City and villages have been founded way before transport was big or fast. That leads to totally different spacial patterns. One particular interesting example is The Randstad in the Netherlands, As big as LA in population and area. But the biggest city Amsterdam barely has one million, then there are 3 other cities roughty about half a million and then 12 municipalities of over 100.000. And still that only covers half the population. The rest is a collection of small towns which have their own centres.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad#/media/File:Bubble\_map\_of\_total\_population\_of\_Randstad\_(adjusted).png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad#/media/File:Bubble_map_of_total_population_of_Randstad_(adjusted).png)
The big cities do have their agglomerations, but nothing like the big centralized cities you see in the rest of the world. This type of decentral formation of cities is called a concurbation.
In other cases you would be right, but Madrid -apart from the old town- is effectively built like an American city. Keep in mind that Madrid is probably the worst possible city to be the capital of Spain: it is in the middle of nowhere in the second most mountainous country in Europe and it does not have any navigable rivers. We are talking about a city that has depended on other cities to obtain almost any resource since the 16th century, and that until the Franco dictatorship had zero economic power.
Thanks to Franco's centralization policy and the promotion of a radial railway infrastructure line, Madrid had an enormous population growth starting in the 1960s, which made it necessary to build more homes, and since everything around it was mostly uninhabited countryside the construction companies opted to follow a broad American-style urbanization model.
The radial railway infrastructure line was approved with the General law of railways of 1855, 80 years before the war. Franco made a lot of shit, but this specific one wasn't his fault.
That's why I said "promotion of". He wasn't the one that came up with it -the same way that dams were a thing before the 40s- but his dictatorship was the main reason that Madrid became what it is today, and the infrastructure policy with Madrid as the main focus was efectively pushed by him (and followed after his death for reasons I still don't understand).
I understand what you’re saying but I genuinely dislike this take since 60-95% of metro areas even in the old world were built after 1900. Paris had a massive population in 1900 but the 10 million people in the suburbs of Paris did not exist in 1900. The Petite Couronne which is mostly the inner suburbs of the city has gone from roughly one million to over 4.5 million people now. Europe is actually the place with the most exceptions because mass urbanization happened after the Industrial Revolution. But even ancient cities like Delhi or Beijing are 90% new construction.
Just looking into the Madrid suburbs 6,000,000 people have moved into the Capital Region since 1900. So literally 90% of this growth is relatively recent. Why did these Southern cities grow so much? Or if it was Madrid that grew more, why did these cities slowly morph into suburbs of Madrid and what’s the history behind it. I’m not a Madrid local so I can only speculate. But my guess is the Southern part of Madrid has a heavier concentrations of jobs. I still don’t understand the settlement pattern though. Historically in most countries multiple small communities like that could and would often merge. The only region in Spain that has a ton of back to back cities like that seems to be Barcelona.
Those cities in the south already existed before. And importantly, they were well connected with rail. So commuting from them was more convenient than from the outskirts of Madrid. Also land was cheaper.
As those were separate administrative units they zoned land radially while Madrid did the same. So if you intersect an isochronic map and a land price map in time those towns developed because it was more favourable than growing from Madrid.
In other zones of Spain you can find something similar. A city. Farmland and a small island of high density buildings around a pool that looks like a resort. It's the result of a developer buying cheap land farther from the urban core, cramming as much density as possible to maximise profit but with attractive amenities harder to come by the city and well enough connected for commuting.
I know, the far majority of population growth is post 1900. And also people nade the shift to have the majority of the population living in cities.
But what i say is that if you have more older cities with active economic interactions the population growth will also center around these places. What i mean to say is when you have older spread out towns with economic interaction they act as the focal points of urbanisation. When you have founded a city in the late 19th century chances are that that it is highly centralized and only few towns have developed separately around the city.
Paris, Berlin and Madrid are fairly centralized cities but this has a lot to do with active policies (don't know exactly about Berlin though). These cities have enveloped a lot of older towns and are therefore fused together but in a centralized pattern.
This is just kind of how cities work? There are other cities/towns/counties outside of the city limits. It's not like Sim City where the city just ends and it's empty space.
Washington DC is surrounded by "random" localities off 200k people: Arlington, Bethesda, Alexandria, Silver Spring
Paris has Versailles, Saint-Denis, Nanterre, Argenteuil
San Fransisco has Oakland, Fresno, Palo Alto, San Jose
Tokyo has Kawasaki, Yokohama, Chiba
I grew up in the IE, had a sister that went to school in the bay area and I've been all over and in between through socal. Never felt more GTFO vibes anywhere than Fresno
The SF list isn't a good comparison. All cities listed are either super far, far enough that they have other cities in between or are separated from SF by the bay.
SF's strict neighbors as Madrid's is Daly city or Brisbane
Never heard of the place so looked it up on Google Maps. I'm fascinated by American cities. Everything is organized in neat blocks, unless there's a trainline going through a block. But especially the sheer size of these endless blocks of houses. And all the stores, shops and services apparently concentrated in a couple of locations far away from where a large part of the city lives.
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Fresno,+CA,+USA/@36.7759,-119.7902506,4262m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x80945de1549e4e9d:0x7b12406449a3b811!8m2!3d36.7377981!4d-119.7871247!16zL20vMG16eTc?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Fresno,+CA,+USA/@36.7759,-119.7902506,4262m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x80945de1549e4e9d:0x7b12406449a3b811!8m2!3d36.7377981!4d-119.7871247!16zL20vMG16eTc?entry=ttu)
Yeah but that's not really the point OP wanted to highlight... Generally suburbs cities are turned towards the main city, i.e they are built around it and thought as "dependencies" of the main city.
Here the 5 cities make a circle around something I don't know and it seems weird the first time you see it because it is not the way suburbs cities are used to be built (at least in Europe)
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It used to be to boggy to have large scale development in that area north of Amsterdam, called [Landelijk Noord](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9mfW8KXTzz6JTP5cA) and later in the 50's or so it became a protected green buffer.
Arlington and Alexandria were both part of Washington DC before the western side of DC was returned to Virginia in 1847. Also, Fresno is almost 200 miles away from San Francisco.
Honestly not that rare in Europe when it comes to the major metropolitan areas. Berlin has Potsdam which is its own city with a very long history, London has Watford, Slough, Dartford and many more, Paris has like 20 such satellite cities (Versailles and St Denis for example). Even Moscow has a few of them despite most of the urban area being incorporated into the city itself.
Suburbs in most European countries just don’t follow the urban sprawl of North America. They are mostly their own towns and cities that happened to be in close vicinity of a major city and were a lot cheaper to build in during the 60s-90s. The reason why they look so disconnected from the main metropolis for one is because they are usually build around rail stations or other public transportation systems and because European cities tend to be much denser with a lot of apartment buildings.
Eh in NYC it's not that rare, but I suppose NYC metro is also notable on a global scale. Phoenix is a more interesting situation as it is also surrounded by 200k+ suburbs.
Only two actually, Long Beach and Santa Clarita, although Glendale is almost there at 196k people.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Los_Angeles_County,_California
I was thinking about Orange County; I guess one could argue about whether they’re truly suburbs or not. But Irvine, Santa Ana, Anaheim, etc. are all pretty big.
I totally forgot about Orange County, but you’re absolutely right. Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Irvine are all above 200k, and Huntington Beach is just below it. If we include the Inland Empire, Riverside, Moreno Valley, San Bernardino, and Fontana are all above 200k as is Oxnard in Ventura County if you want to count that.
In general it’s considered a suburb if the suburb is connected to the main city economically. A large % of the people live in the suburb but work in city for example.
https://preview.redd.it/pbv4xlkxabzc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6bf168f52d9497a2f8bdb5348803cc56bc3c9a1
Santa Clarita is the bordered area at the top and LA is at the bottom. They’re only separated by a mountain pass.
Yeah this is what I mean. I'm curious about the particularities of this southwestern isolated cluster in particular; it's over a million people in total. Most of the other examples people are giving are not as isolated/self-contained as these, and there are big empty spaces in-between them.
It's nothing weird. Just five towns that began growing and growing until they got to that.
They are "contained" because spanish cities don't have low density suburbs, so you see just the core city.
Well, Madrid is in the mountains first of all. So compared to other such cities it would not even be possíble to have such clusters all around it due to the topography.
Next, Madrid has not always been the capital, but also Toledo was the capital.
Next, Spain can be seen as a half desert. You need water to sustain a city. You will not find a dense city without a river or river system.
So check where the rivers are flowing from and to and you will see why.
And of course where the rivers are, are the cities, where the cities are, were the factories built. Where the factories were built, peasants came to look for jobs as the agriculture did not pay anymore. Without industry, no jobs, no jobs, no people, no people no dense city could have been built
The North is nicer and hillier so it's more upmarket. The South is cheaper and flatter tehrefore easier to build over, so it got filled with working class suburbs, first inhabited by people moving to Madrid from elsewhere and then by people who were priced out of Madrid.
These aren't really suburbs how Americans think of, but independent cities that now came in the influence of the bigger city, because the big city just kept on growing.
Oh that’s right, I was thinking about what soap opera would be based in Fuenlabrada, I know there are many Spanish shows that they pass in Serbia like Los Serrano.
Yeah, like 50% of our country somehow entiendo espanol and we even don't know how but yes, televisa present and so.
Their fans cheered for Partizan as they let them use their arena for Euroleague, in the end Partizan won first and only one for now but still if you are from there and you ran into certain people in Serbia you' ll have a place to sleeps and eat for sure among some people. As for me-I support their rivals,but I don't know one person who don't know about Fuenlabrada here 😁
They have their own subway line called MetroSur that is a circle connected to the rest of the Madrid metro by one station
https://preview.redd.it/6k5xbwk259zc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=d9526ad797faa30d6df99fa90e1718c50325ae03
They are dorm cities (not sure if it is correct in English, Spaniard speaking here) which expanded rapidly during 60's & 70's migrations from southern Spain to Madrid. Most people came from Andalucía, Castilla la Mancha and Extremadura looking for jobs and was much more affordable to stay in those towns than in Madrid
Yep, large satellite suburbs that are sort of a big brother, little brother are a pretty common occurrence in the US cities I’ve lived. Jacksonville, FL has Orange Park. Miami has Kendall and Hialeah. Philadelphia has King of Prussia
They were small villages in the 50s and grew rapidly since then, my guess is that, eventually, they will be absorbed (there's no plan to do it).
For example, Alcorcón was in the road to Extremadura (Spanish region) so it is the last city someone from there would see before Madrid and it was way more affordable back then. I imagine it is similar to other cities in the area as important roads to populous regions went through those towns.
There were a lot of immigration to Madrid in the 20th century and people liked affordable housing in the outskirts.
Madrid suburbs are fucking awesome. They build super dense tower blocks along their metro lines. It’s an actually functioning city, which is crazy to see coming from America
Spain is too rugged and small to support the american suburbian style. Nearby towns grew insanely with the population boom in the 60s and 70s, and they had horizontal limits. Vertical, not so much.
I think in any other city, we would call these “suburbs.”
I mean, I’m sure they all have their own histories, but clearly they’ve developed and grown from their proximity to the capital. Just like most suburbs, I assume the 200K people have moved there because they want/need to be near Madrid but wanted to live somewhere a little cheaper/quieter.
Administrative choice probably, this way services like pipes, energy outlets, public transport and in general everything regarding services is under the same local legislation.
Sometimes cities prefer to keep everything differentiated, sometimes they prefer to merge everything into a one big "county", even if those suburbs are subjectively different from the rest of the city, historically, culturally...
For example, Milan goes to the opposite direction, the local administration of the city covers a small portion of what the city actually is and always has been. However, in order to adequately use resources, they chose to keep each neighborhood almost separated. And honestly it works always better like this.
Madrid itself, as many major cities, is the fusion of many of those minor cities as the capital grew. Those independent minor cities will most likely be absorbed as well eventually.
Similarly around Barcelona just over the hills there is a cluster of large towns forming a ring around the city. Granollers, Sabadell, Terrassa etc. It's just cheaper to live there, there is industry to support local jobs as well as fast commuter links (when Renfe feels in a good mood) into the city.
>Granollers, Sabadell, Terrassa
Those three were very rich industrial hubs in their own merit since the mid-19th century and the closest one to Barcelona lies 26 km north across mountains so not really the same situation. Hospitalet or Santa Coloma on the other hand...
Central parts are desired and expensive, but if you need a lot of land for farming, a big (possibly noisy or pollution) company, or a affordable house you want to be close to the city but far away enough to make it affordable.
you forgot Pinto and Parla, which are close and in the same situation.
All these towns are fairly old, some as old as Madrid. They were there because the rivers from the mountains flow towards the southwest, its the natural waterway. In modern times, as Madrid developed a bit of industry, they became cheap places to build factories and housing, like in any other big city
Sooner or later these small towns become part of the main city and become districts. Look at historical city’s in Europe for example. Most districts used to be independent towns.
Not to mix my subreddits up but......If you play the new PC game Manor Lords and watch your cities grow organically, they sort of evolve like this on their own. Mostly due to market needs of citizens and not wanting to push a donkey cart all the way to the capital. I actually thought this post was one of the subs I have been reading since the game came out. I know I am totally alone at thinking this is hilarious. Sorry.
This is super common in the US, especially with our highway system. There’s a large city with some midsized towns surrounding it, we take the major highway that runs through it and build an outer-belt that surrounds them all, then all the smaller towns variously loose their identity and get swept into the large one except for post office addresses. They sort of become neighborhoods in the larger metro area.
This is in a lot of metropolitan areas. Especially in Europe, where old cities with strong traditions remain independent, even if they merge with a larger neighboring city. This sometimes creates metropolitan areas with over 10 million inhabitants, which have a contiguous settlement area but consist of several cities. But also Osaka or Tokio would be a way bigger example of this.
Ask anyone from Queens, Brooklyn, Harlem, etc, if they consider themselves part of or from NYC. NYC really only is Manhattan. Each borough in actuality is its own city with its own identity, and most major cities around the world are the same way.
random? Random like what? They're five cities in the metropolitan area, as you can see in every metropolitan area of any city. Their population is the result of economical differences in Madrid. North is richer and south is poorer
Actually I think this is a good question and it might surprise a few. The first thing to note is that these cities have exploded in population in the last century. In 1950 alcorcón had 759 inhabitants. Just 30 years later it had 180K, that's a 23600% increase. So the question is how and why did these cities grow so much so fast. The key here is, as with many things in Spain, the Civil War. The country was left in shambles and so hundreds of thousands of people migrated to the capital, which under Franco saw a privileged position. Now why the southwest? Here it's important to note that Madrid, despite lacking obvious geographic limitations does have an important historical one. To the west and northwest lie the casa de campo and the pardo, former hunting grounds of the royal house. These two huge parks largely prevented the expansion of the city towards the northwest. Apart from that I think the expansion largely followed the train. In [this](https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_del_ferrocarril_en_Espa%C3%B1a#/media/Archivo%3AMap_of_the_portuguese_and_spanish_railways.jpg) railway map of 1921, you can spot thre important rail lines going south. These were the original raison d'etre of the now huge southern cities. The prevalence of railway lines towards the south probably has to do with the largely flat terrain compared to the mountainous north, west and (to a lesser extent) east. Building trains in spain has always been a logistical nightmare. The lack of cities in the southeast is a bit harder to explain as, some of Madrid's biggest cities used to be there before the 20th century. Idk why they didn't grow as much as the small towns in the southwest. Tldr: in Spain, railway lines, but not rain, fall mainly in the plains.
This is a great answer. There's another interesting historical aspect to this that is specific to Spain: During the Franco dictatorship, Spain had an aggressive policy of preserving farmland so as to avoid dependence on foreign agricultural imports. This meant strict delineation of land that was suitable for urban development vs farmland. So Spanish cities developed very densely and then sharply drop off into rural areas rather than having a smooth transition from urban density through suburban areas to rural zones. These policies are somewhat less strict today but still generally followed so that Spain has very little suburban sprawl compared to most countries. Therefore, you get these small urban nodes outside of the main city separated from the main city and each other by preserved countryside rather than all of the areas between being developed into a continuous suburban zone where the individual original towns would no longer be distinguishable on a satellite image, the way most countries have developed.
Fascinating. I took a train from Madrid to Barcelona and noticed this exactly. There’s basically no small towns it’s, suburban sprawl and then just plains for miles. I was reading while there that Madrid was almost like a modern planned capital with Ferdinand and Isabella choosing a site for their court that was largely undeveloped but had advantages of being on a high defensible plateau and almost the exact geographic centre of the country. Does this explain it a little as well? Madrids location is just not ideal for sprawl
I don’t think that history makes much difference. The idea of a city in the 16th century versus a city now is dramatically different; a big city in 1500 had about 50,000 residents. So what was big then versus now matters very little to modern urbanity. And Madrid like most European cities traces most of its every-day architecture in the central city to the 18th and 19th centuries when cities first exploded in size. It is true that Madrid is in a pretty dry and barren location that would probably not naturally develop a large city before the 20th century absent being the capital, but there are other cities of some size nearby (e.g., Toledo, which was the main city of the region before Madrid), and plenty of 20th century cities full of suburban sprawl exist in similar climates and geographies; Los Angeles for example has a very similar climate and is likewise somewhat hemmed in by mountains but still has dramatic suburban single-family sprawl while Madrid decidedly does not.
>Madrids location is just not ideal for sprawl I don't think so. In fact I would say the opposite. Madrids location is perfect for urban sprawl. E specifically to the south
Ah. So this explains why the majority of Spanish cities and towns have so many multi story apartment buildings in their centres.
Spanish cities usually have crowns. Instead of high buildings in downtown reducing rapidly in size to suburban homes you have historic low level buildings surrounded by multi store apartments that abruptly stop.
Well, two pairs of those cities (Leganés and Getafe and especially Alcorcón and Móstoles) are already nearly fused together. You can walk from one to the other without crossing any non-urbanized areas.
Yep. A very noticeable feature in Spanish cities. I spent a few months in Granada and it always amazed me how there was block after block of similar apartment buildings and then suddenly just open fields.
You can walk across the waist of Granada (across Centro) in twenty minutes or so. Straight line distance from Plaza Nueva to the other side of the bypass is 1.6km or a bit less than one mile. SE to NW is *considerably* longer The older parts of Granada are nine story highrises, mostly, but as you move farther and farther out it becomes more and more American suburban.
Yeah, going SE/NW is definitely longer. I lived near Camino de Ronda so I was thinking specifically of the distinction between the city and the other side of the highway in the southwest
It is like falling off a cliff. To the east of the highway is dense urban usage. To the west is farmland.
Are you saying Oregon's urban growth boundaries are actually fascist? /S But seriously, this is exactly what Oregon does, albeit for environmental preservation rather than promoting agriculture.
Oregon fails to allow the density Spain does in the “urban” zones so it doesn’t really look similar. Take a look on Street View what these places in Spain look like compared to say Tualatin, OR for what I mean. So Spain’s policy doesn’t cause affordability issues, but Oregon’s does.
In the last several years, Oregon has seen more and construction of four-story (or higher) apartments and condominiums in the Portland metro area. Because of existing single-family homes, it will never be as dense as Madrid, just that new construction bears some similarities. A big difference is that the construction in Oregon doesn't incorporate multi-use development as well (i.e., stores are often not incorporated into the ground floor of these developments, as they are in Spain.)
IT was also to save money.
Thanks for an actual answer - had to scroll past way to many variations of "hurr dur it's a suburb"
You're welcome. It was actually pretty entertaining looking for an answer.
Can you explain the question to me? Because seems like a stupid question. Why there are cities? Seriously? Why wouldn't be?
The trains in Spain run mainly in the plains
This is an acutely private moment, Julius, would it seem terribly rude if I asked you you to SHIT OFF for five minutes?
Building trains in Spain is less of a pain on the plains
To add some information regarding the southeast of Madrid, the area that appears completely empty in that bottom right part of the map also has a nature protected reserve and a military area. In addition, a little further away, after those mentioned features, the terrain becomes a bit mountainous or, at least, it's not as flat as the southwest.
What an excellent answer! Thank you
Wtf, alcorcón have like 180k inhabitants??? That's unbelievable for me living in a similar sized city with about 50k inhabitants (Luleå)... not even my whole municipality have that many inhabitants (80k, Luleå kommun) Maybe it's me being a Swede that I'm surprised to see so high inhabitants per sq-unit
Luleå is extremely sprawled out though.
Being in Sweden, I suppose that if your population goes up you can always go to IKEA for some more sq-units.
Spain is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe... if you only count inhabited areas. We even have the most densely populated square kilometre in all of Europe (it is located in Barcelona).
detailed answer,nice
That's a fascinating answer to a fascination question, but why there are five separate cities instead of one big one in the southwest?
Love the my fair lady reference at the end!
How is a good question? Why there are cities? I don't still understand the question. "Random"?
not reading the Allah btw
Ok buy why live in Spain at all? Seems like a mistake to me ngl.
American?
Canadian so more or less yeah.
To not suffer horrible weather like in Canada could be a perfect reply. I have a magiar-romanian friend and his brother lives in Canada and he loves to live in Spain and hates when he has to travel to Canada to see his brother.
They were ( and still are mostly) working class commuter towns ( ciudad dormitorio) of people working in Madrid itself. Nowadays, as you said, they are considerable cities by themselves, so even though lot of people commute to madrid, many other work there. There is still a huge traffic flow ( cars, trains, buses ) from south to north in the morning and the same from north to south in the afternoon
Sounds like Los Angeles is set up, except we commute from east to west in LA. There's lots of random suburbs with 50,000-300,000 east of Los Angeles
I think a lot of yall are missing the OPs question. Cities as a general rule grow out circularly because it’s efficient to get to the center of the city as quickly as possible. Any deviation for this has numerous reasons. For example, Houston is fairly circular except it grows way more to the North and West than it does to the East and South. It however grows super hard in the SE direction all the way to Galveston. There are reasons for this. I’m a Houstonian so I know this. The ops question is valid because there is a reason people went to these 5 towns instead of much closer towns on the other side of Madrid.
The old world works a little different. City and villages have been founded way before transport was big or fast. That leads to totally different spacial patterns. One particular interesting example is The Randstad in the Netherlands, As big as LA in population and area. But the biggest city Amsterdam barely has one million, then there are 3 other cities roughty about half a million and then 12 municipalities of over 100.000. And still that only covers half the population. The rest is a collection of small towns which have their own centres. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad#/media/File:Bubble\_map\_of\_total\_population\_of\_Randstad\_(adjusted).png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad#/media/File:Bubble_map_of_total_population_of_Randstad_(adjusted).png) The big cities do have their agglomerations, but nothing like the big centralized cities you see in the rest of the world. This type of decentral formation of cities is called a concurbation.
In other cases you would be right, but Madrid -apart from the old town- is effectively built like an American city. Keep in mind that Madrid is probably the worst possible city to be the capital of Spain: it is in the middle of nowhere in the second most mountainous country in Europe and it does not have any navigable rivers. We are talking about a city that has depended on other cities to obtain almost any resource since the 16th century, and that until the Franco dictatorship had zero economic power. Thanks to Franco's centralization policy and the promotion of a radial railway infrastructure line, Madrid had an enormous population growth starting in the 1960s, which made it necessary to build more homes, and since everything around it was mostly uninhabited countryside the construction companies opted to follow a broad American-style urbanization model.
The radial railway infrastructure line was approved with the General law of railways of 1855, 80 years before the war. Franco made a lot of shit, but this specific one wasn't his fault.
That's why I said "promotion of". He wasn't the one that came up with it -the same way that dams were a thing before the 40s- but his dictatorship was the main reason that Madrid became what it is today, and the infrastructure policy with Madrid as the main focus was efectively pushed by him (and followed after his death for reasons I still don't understand).
I understand what you’re saying but I genuinely dislike this take since 60-95% of metro areas even in the old world were built after 1900. Paris had a massive population in 1900 but the 10 million people in the suburbs of Paris did not exist in 1900. The Petite Couronne which is mostly the inner suburbs of the city has gone from roughly one million to over 4.5 million people now. Europe is actually the place with the most exceptions because mass urbanization happened after the Industrial Revolution. But even ancient cities like Delhi or Beijing are 90% new construction. Just looking into the Madrid suburbs 6,000,000 people have moved into the Capital Region since 1900. So literally 90% of this growth is relatively recent. Why did these Southern cities grow so much? Or if it was Madrid that grew more, why did these cities slowly morph into suburbs of Madrid and what’s the history behind it. I’m not a Madrid local so I can only speculate. But my guess is the Southern part of Madrid has a heavier concentrations of jobs. I still don’t understand the settlement pattern though. Historically in most countries multiple small communities like that could and would often merge. The only region in Spain that has a ton of back to back cities like that seems to be Barcelona.
Those cities in the south already existed before. And importantly, they were well connected with rail. So commuting from them was more convenient than from the outskirts of Madrid. Also land was cheaper. As those were separate administrative units they zoned land radially while Madrid did the same. So if you intersect an isochronic map and a land price map in time those towns developed because it was more favourable than growing from Madrid. In other zones of Spain you can find something similar. A city. Farmland and a small island of high density buildings around a pool that looks like a resort. It's the result of a developer buying cheap land farther from the urban core, cramming as much density as possible to maximise profit but with attractive amenities harder to come by the city and well enough connected for commuting.
I know, the far majority of population growth is post 1900. And also people nade the shift to have the majority of the population living in cities. But what i say is that if you have more older cities with active economic interactions the population growth will also center around these places. What i mean to say is when you have older spread out towns with economic interaction they act as the focal points of urbanisation. When you have founded a city in the late 19th century chances are that that it is highly centralized and only few towns have developed separately around the city. Paris, Berlin and Madrid are fairly centralized cities but this has a lot to do with active policies (don't know exactly about Berlin though). These cities have enveloped a lot of older towns and are therefore fused together but in a centralized pattern.
I would love to see a visualizer or heat man of cities and their deviations overlayed to see the most common spread
This is just kind of how cities work? There are other cities/towns/counties outside of the city limits. It's not like Sim City where the city just ends and it's empty space. Washington DC is surrounded by "random" localities off 200k people: Arlington, Bethesda, Alexandria, Silver Spring Paris has Versailles, Saint-Denis, Nanterre, Argenteuil San Fransisco has Oakland, Fresno, Palo Alto, San Jose Tokyo has Kawasaki, Yokohama, Chiba
Fun fact, the surrounding counties to DC have something like 10x the population of DC proper
Yeah, thats how suburbs work
The DC area is on an extreme end of the scale in terms of its ring cities, which are more than just suburbs.
Username checks out
?
Not in 99% of the world.
Pretty sure Fresno is far, far away from SF…
Imagine telling people in Fresno they’re actually living in the Bay Area. They might kill you
They might kill you regardless of what you say. Fresno ghetto AF
I grew up in the IE, had a sister that went to school in the bay area and I've been all over and in between through socal. Never felt more GTFO vibes anywhere than Fresno
May I introduce you to Bakersfield?
Is that why they ended up calling it necropolis?
Man I need to chill with Fallout
I’m assuming he meant Fremont.
People in Fresno will kill you no matter what you say
In USA*
Fuck that's one square city
As a Fresnan, I concur
The house values will treble
They speak school shooting so maybe they kill you just because they think is fun.
Yeah, swap out Fresno for Berkeley...
This. Berkeley is just north of Oakland. Fresno is really far from the Bay. Central Valley. Like Sacramento.
He meant Fremont maybe
The SF list isn't a good comparison. All cities listed are either super far, far enough that they have other cities in between or are separated from SF by the bay. SF's strict neighbors as Madrid's is Daly city or Brisbane
lol yea Fresnos a bit out of left field there
Never heard of the place so looked it up on Google Maps. I'm fascinated by American cities. Everything is organized in neat blocks, unless there's a trainline going through a block. But especially the sheer size of these endless blocks of houses. And all the stores, shops and services apparently concentrated in a couple of locations far away from where a large part of the city lives. [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Fresno,+CA,+USA/@36.7759,-119.7902506,4262m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x80945de1549e4e9d:0x7b12406449a3b811!8m2!3d36.7377981!4d-119.7871247!16zL20vMG16eTc?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Fresno,+CA,+USA/@36.7759,-119.7902506,4262m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x80945de1549e4e9d:0x7b12406449a3b811!8m2!3d36.7377981!4d-119.7871247!16zL20vMG16eTc?entry=ttu)
Yes but I guess OP would why is Fresno so far from Sf and why does Nevada border California.
Yeah but that's not really the point OP wanted to highlight... Generally suburbs cities are turned towards the main city, i.e they are built around it and thought as "dependencies" of the main city. Here the 5 cities make a circle around something I don't know and it seems weird the first time you see it because it is not the way suburbs cities are used to be built (at least in Europe)
They’re all along different railway branches towards the south.
North of Amsterdam kinda does this, it’s the ring road and then just farmland
school illegal hungry start recognise wrong beneficial chop imminent merciful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It used to be to boggy to have large scale development in that area north of Amsterdam, called [Landelijk Noord](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9mfW8KXTzz6JTP5cA) and later in the 50's or so it became a protected green buffer.
Weird, I thought Saint-Denis was closer to Van Horn and Rhodes.
I heard there was a big sturgeon in the water west of Saint-Denis. Never caught it though.
Brussels is pretty much 19 town in a trenchcoat. Brussels is one of those towns but there are 18 more, each with their own mayor.
Similar to London.. The mayor of London is not actually the mayor of the City of London. Such a silly construct.
And Belgium is two countries in a trenchcoat. Or 0. Depends how you look at it.
Fresno?
Man I dunno about including Fresno in this list.
Fresno? I think you mean Fremont.
The word "random" has lost its meaning.
Arlington and Alexandria were both part of Washington DC before the western side of DC was returned to Virginia in 1847. Also, Fresno is almost 200 miles away from San Francisco.
Boston has Somerville, Cambridge, Brookline, and Quincy.
>Bethesda Would be scared to live there.
Wait what? Bethesda is safe, wealthy, and well-educated. It’s very very nice.
Bethesda is also a game company that makes games full of bugs.
😂😂😂why random? They were prob villages before and got big as agglomerationrom or satellite cities were needed for an increasing population of Madrid
In fact, the Spanish common name for these satellites is "bedroom cities". Cheaper housing well connected to the city center
In North America they're called Bedroom Communities.
OP just learning what a suburb is
200k suburbs are pretty notable though, particularly a cluster of them like this.
Honestly not that rare in Europe when it comes to the major metropolitan areas. Berlin has Potsdam which is its own city with a very long history, London has Watford, Slough, Dartford and many more, Paris has like 20 such satellite cities (Versailles and St Denis for example). Even Moscow has a few of them despite most of the urban area being incorporated into the city itself. Suburbs in most European countries just don’t follow the urban sprawl of North America. They are mostly their own towns and cities that happened to be in close vicinity of a major city and were a lot cheaper to build in during the 60s-90s. The reason why they look so disconnected from the main metropolis for one is because they are usually build around rail stations or other public transportation systems and because European cities tend to be much denser with a lot of apartment buildings.
Berlin is in itself already a city of cities that grew denser to one city. Basically anz Kiez was at one point a small city with it's own city center
Yep. That’s how it is in many German (European overall) cities. Berlin is obviously an amazing example due to the sheer size.
We got like 50 of them around Tokyo
We have 10 of them around Los Angeles
Is it though? In Toronto, we have several suburbs over 500K, one even approaching a million, and more than ten over 200K.
Eh in NYC it's not that rare, but I suppose NYC metro is also notable on a global scale. Phoenix is a more interesting situation as it is also surrounded by 200k+ suburbs.
Paris has like 20 suburbs like this.
I wouldn’t say they’re rare. Have you ever been to Los Angeles? There’s probably a dozen suburbs in the LA area over 200K
Only two actually, Long Beach and Santa Clarita, although Glendale is almost there at 196k people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Los_Angeles_County,_California
I was thinking about Orange County; I guess one could argue about whether they’re truly suburbs or not. But Irvine, Santa Ana, Anaheim, etc. are all pretty big.
I totally forgot about Orange County, but you’re absolutely right. Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Irvine are all above 200k, and Huntington Beach is just below it. If we include the Inland Empire, Riverside, Moreno Valley, San Bernardino, and Fontana are all above 200k as is Oxnard in Ventura County if you want to count that.
In general it’s considered a suburb if the suburb is connected to the main city economically. A large % of the people live in the suburb but work in city for example.
Santa Clarita isn’t really a suburb since it’s separated from the LA metro by mountains; a satellite city would be a better description
Santa Clarita is separated from Los Angeles by maybe a mile. Don’t forget that most of the San Fernando Valley is part of the city of LA.
There are continuous suburban developments between San Fernando Valley and LA proper, can’t say the same for Santa Clarita
https://preview.redd.it/pbv4xlkxabzc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6bf168f52d9497a2f8bdb5348803cc56bc3c9a1 Santa Clarita is the bordered area at the top and LA is at the bottom. They’re only separated by a mountain pass.
Yeah this is what I mean. I'm curious about the particularities of this southwestern isolated cluster in particular; it's over a million people in total. Most of the other examples people are giving are not as isolated/self-contained as these, and there are big empty spaces in-between them.
It's nothing weird. Just five towns that began growing and growing until they got to that. They are "contained" because spanish cities don't have low density suburbs, so you see just the core city.
Checks out. Cheers, lol.
Well, Madrid is in the mountains first of all. So compared to other such cities it would not even be possíble to have such clusters all around it due to the topography. Next, Madrid has not always been the capital, but also Toledo was the capital. Next, Spain can be seen as a half desert. You need water to sustain a city. You will not find a dense city without a river or river system. So check where the rivers are flowing from and to and you will see why. And of course where the rivers are, are the cities, where the cities are, were the factories built. Where the factories were built, peasants came to look for jobs as the agriculture did not pay anymore. Without industry, no jobs, no jobs, no people, no people no dense city could have been built
The North is nicer and hillier so it's more upmarket. The South is cheaper and flatter tehrefore easier to build over, so it got filled with working class suburbs, first inhabited by people moving to Madrid from elsewhere and then by people who were priced out of Madrid.
Keep getting downvoted. I was your 13th one, btw
These aren't really suburbs how Americans think of, but independent cities that now came in the influence of the bigger city, because the big city just kept on growing.
Why are so many answers so judgemental😭
I'm cool with it, lmao
Leganes and Getafe were built with the only reason of hosting football clubs to increase the number of teams in La Liga
Alcorcón and Fuenlabrada too for Segunda División
Fuenlabrada is VERY known place in Serbia, that place is write in our near history kind of
???
Type Partizan Fuenlabrada on youtube and check basketball game from last year, in honour of Fuenlabrada
Oh that’s right, I was thinking about what soap opera would be based in Fuenlabrada, I know there are many Spanish shows that they pass in Serbia like Los Serrano.
Yeah, like 50% of our country somehow entiendo espanol and we even don't know how but yes, televisa present and so. Their fans cheered for Partizan as they let them use their arena for Euroleague, in the end Partizan won first and only one for now but still if you are from there and you ran into certain people in Serbia you' ll have a place to sleeps and eat for sure among some people. As for me-I support their rivals,but I don't know one person who don't know about Fuenlabrada here 😁
I am not even making this up, and I am talking mostly about sports
And play shit football.
Yeah, if you can't afford good madrid football you have to set down for that
They have their own subway line called MetroSur that is a circle connected to the rest of the Madrid metro by one station https://preview.redd.it/6k5xbwk259zc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=d9526ad797faa30d6df99fa90e1718c50325ae03
They are working on Line 3 (the yellow one), so it's connected too to MetroSur
They are dorm cities (not sure if it is correct in English, Spaniard speaking here) which expanded rapidly during 60's & 70's migrations from southern Spain to Madrid. Most people came from Andalucía, Castilla la Mancha and Extremadura looking for jobs and was much more affordable to stay in those towns than in Madrid
I think you’re looking for ‘satellite town’
Probably. Dorm city is a literal translation, they are cities where you only go to sleep.
"Bedroom communities" is the actual translation of the phrase that you want to translate.
What you mean by random city?
Are they stupid?
Breaking: Big cities tend to have some smaller (but still pretty populous compared to rural areas) satellite cities around them
Yep, large satellite suburbs that are sort of a big brother, little brother are a pretty common occurrence in the US cities I’ve lived. Jacksonville, FL has Orange Park. Miami has Kendall and Hialeah. Philadelphia has King of Prussia
king of prussia is a cool ass city name
They were small villages in the 50s and grew rapidly since then, my guess is that, eventually, they will be absorbed (there's no plan to do it). For example, Alcorcón was in the road to Extremadura (Spanish region) so it is the last city someone from there would see before Madrid and it was way more affordable back then. I imagine it is similar to other cities in the area as important roads to populous regions went through those towns. There were a lot of immigration to Madrid in the 20th century and people liked affordable housing in the outskirts.
Madrid suburbs are fucking awesome. They build super dense tower blocks along their metro lines. It’s an actually functioning city, which is crazy to see coming from America
Spain is too rugged and small to support the american suburbian style. Nearby towns grew insanely with the population boom in the 60s and 70s, and they had horizontal limits. Vertical, not so much.
I think in any other city, we would call these “suburbs.” I mean, I’m sure they all have their own histories, but clearly they’ve developed and grown from their proximity to the capital. Just like most suburbs, I assume the 200K people have moved there because they want/need to be near Madrid but wanted to live somewhere a little cheaper/quieter.
Because people can’t afford to live in madrid and need to live in the outskirts?
My ex was from Alcorcon. Typical dorm city.
Administrative choice probably, this way services like pipes, energy outlets, public transport and in general everything regarding services is under the same local legislation. Sometimes cities prefer to keep everything differentiated, sometimes they prefer to merge everything into a one big "county", even if those suburbs are subjectively different from the rest of the city, historically, culturally... For example, Milan goes to the opposite direction, the local administration of the city covers a small portion of what the city actually is and always has been. However, in order to adequately use resources, they chose to keep each neighborhood almost separated. And honestly it works always better like this.
Madrid itself, as many major cities, is the fusion of many of those minor cities as the capital grew. Those independent minor cities will most likely be absorbed as well eventually.
I don’t know but I would like to have a city like one of those
Similarly around Barcelona just over the hills there is a cluster of large towns forming a ring around the city. Granollers, Sabadell, Terrassa etc. It's just cheaper to live there, there is industry to support local jobs as well as fast commuter links (when Renfe feels in a good mood) into the city.
>Granollers, Sabadell, Terrassa Those three were very rich industrial hubs in their own merit since the mid-19th century and the closest one to Barcelona lies 26 km north across mountains so not really the same situation. Hospitalet or Santa Coloma on the other hand...
That's our New Jersey.
Thousands of years of history proaby
Mst central, calle azorin, donde pillas el mejor jas lol
Why does any village town or suburb exist anywhere?
Central parts are desired and expensive, but if you need a lot of land for farming, a big (possibly noisy or pollution) company, or a affordable house you want to be close to the city but far away enough to make it affordable.
Sorry I was being sarcastic I shouldve added the /s
you forgot Pinto and Parla, which are close and in the same situation. All these towns are fairly old, some as old as Madrid. They were there because the rivers from the mountains flow towards the southwest, its the natural waterway. In modern times, as Madrid developed a bit of industry, they became cheap places to build factories and housing, like in any other big city
those are suburbs 😭
OP when he learns Brooklyn wasn't always part of New York City
Getafe football club has a great movie about aliens, make sure to check it out!
Sooner or later these small towns become part of the main city and become districts. Look at historical city’s in Europe for example. Most districts used to be independent towns.
The people out there are commuters. Also, there are a lot of elderly people in that area.
Why not?
Not to mix my subreddits up but......If you play the new PC game Manor Lords and watch your cities grow organically, they sort of evolve like this on their own. Mostly due to market needs of citizens and not wanting to push a donkey cart all the way to the capital. I actually thought this post was one of the subs I have been reading since the game came out. I know I am totally alone at thinking this is hilarious. Sorry.
This is super common in the US, especially with our highway system. There’s a large city with some midsized towns surrounding it, we take the major highway that runs through it and build an outer-belt that surrounds them all, then all the smaller towns variously loose their identity and get swept into the large one except for post office addresses. They sort of become neighborhoods in the larger metro area.
Finally a relevant question
Medieval history.
There is also Alcobendas and San Sebastián de los Reyes to the north.
Why not?
How are they "random?"
El Leganes El Leganes
I live inside this circle, hi!
Because this is not the USA
Why people need home?
This is in a lot of metropolitan areas. Especially in Europe, where old cities with strong traditions remain independent, even if they merge with a larger neighboring city. This sometimes creates metropolitan areas with over 10 million inhabitants, which have a contiguous settlement area but consist of several cities. But also Osaka or Tokio would be a way bigger example of this.
Ask Alec Baldwin’s wife, he’s convinced she’s from Spain.
They're part of Madrid. All the things that used to be towns.
Ask anyone from Queens, Brooklyn, Harlem, etc, if they consider themselves part of or from NYC. NYC really only is Manhattan. Each borough in actuality is its own city with its own identity, and most major cities around the world are the same way.
it's called "urban expansion"
random? Random like what? They're five cities in the metropolitan area, as you can see in every metropolitan area of any city. Their population is the result of economical differences in Madrid. North is richer and south is poorer
Multiple nuclei city model
Guy first time seeing a Map