Keywords

1 Introduction

Large housing estates built after WWII come from diverse origins and have developed through different trajectories, and this contradicts their representation as spaces that have always been disadvantaged. Half a century after their construction, many of these developments pose no relevant problems and are integrated into residential markets as viable options for all types of residents. However, many others have become stigmatised urban spaces, which are discursively linked to the accumulation of a whole series of social, economic and physical problems (Hall et al. 2005). The reasons these large housing estates have followed divergent trajectories have long been the focal point of important debates in contemporary urban studies, giving rise to complementary theories about their recent evolution (van Kempen et al. 2005b; Rowlands and Murie 2009).

In this debate, the Spanish case presents characteristic specificities that necessitate the systematic study of the evolution of its large housing estates. Particularly important among these specificities is the institutional context in which this type of housing was produced: a totalitarian regime (1939–1978) followed by a transition to the current democracy. In this context, the City of Madrid constitutes a paradigmatic case for the production and transformation of these large housing estates, because of the large volume of housing developments initiated there after the civil war. These developments were a reaction to the demand for housing by a growing work force who were looking for new opportunities in the capital and that, in its first settlement, were often crammed into squatter settlements on the city’s periphery (Tatjer 2005).

Madrid is a relevant case study to research the trajectories of its large housing estates within a context of increasing urban and social vulnerability (fueled by its huge socioeconomic crisis and impressive international immigration). With this aim, we will focus on how these large housing estates have been diversely affected by these processes depending on three factors: their initial characteristics (private or public development), the existence (or not) of the neighbourhoods’ processes of social mobilisation and the institutional context (totalitarian or democratic) in which they were developed. Previous research, such as the RESTATE project, focuses on the study of urban policies in the case of two neighbourhoods in Madrid. Following this line of research, this chapter expands the number of neighbourhoods analysed and proposes a quantitative analysis to know its evolution between 1991 and 2011. First, to this end, the production of public and private large housing estates built in the city of Madrid between 1940s and 1990s is contextualised within the framework of the evolution of housing policies in Spain. Next, we present the data and methods used to analyse the different social and residential trajectories of these large housing estates from 1991 to 2011. We introduce the Urban Vulnerability Index to measure the socio-residential deterioration of these large housing estates. Third, connections are drawn between the trajectories of these large housing estates and the large housing estates characteristics that might explain their diverse types of evolution. In the last section, we reflect on the challenges faced by these large housing estates in contemporary Madrid society which is characterised by social polarisation, cultural heterogeneity, and the mutation of public policies that significantly differentiate it from the context in which these large housing estates were produced.

2 1940–1990: Fifty Years Evolution in Urban Policy and Resident Populations in Madrid

When it comes to understanding the processes involved in both public and private housing development, a differentiation must be made between the two periods which so significantly shaped transformations in the built environment of Madrid: the Francoist period (1939–1978) and the current democracy.

In the 1940s, in the wake of a devastating civil war, people began to think about the restoration of urban space in Madrid. A General Urban Development Plan was created in 1944, the main objective of which was to regulate land use in Madrid and the surrounding cities. Private investment in multiple privatised public plots was often the means through which an increase in the housing production was achieved, alongside land expropriation where the land subdivision process was to be blocked by land owners (Lopez de Lucio et al. 2016). These measures meant that land was reserved to produce accessible public housing as well as to promote private investment, which benefitted from central locations and higher quality residences in terms of size and construction materials than public developments (Lopez de Lucio et al. 2016).

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, urban policy developments were influenced by certain noteworthy socioeconomic processes taking place in Madrid. Madrid’s slowly evolving industrialisation attracted rural populations from around the country and led to the growth of suburbs surrounding Madrid, based among squatter settlements built by the newly arrived population. These suburban places evolved from rural nuclei to becoming new districts of the city of Madrid, and thus increased the area and population of the municipality (see Fig. 11.1).

Fig. 11.1
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Source INE (National Statistics Institute), Municipal alterations in Population Censuses from 1842

Transformations in the population of the city of Madrid and the Comunidad de Madrid 1900–2011.

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To solve problems like the housing scarcity and housing shortages of the post-war period, in 1957 the Social Urgency Plan was implemented, which aimed to put an end to the problem created by these new settlements. Towards this end, various public policy intervention categories were created: poblados de absorción (absorption settlements), poblados mínimos (minimal settlements), poblados dirigidos (guided settlements), poblados de gestión social (social urbanistic management settlements), new urban planning zones and absorption neighbourhood units. Overall, this involved a total of 66 interventions and around 100,000 homes whose purpose was to put a stop to the informal growth of the city and increase police control over internal migration from the rest of Spain into Madrid and its informal settlements (Sambricio 1999; López Díaz 2002).

Figure 11.2 demonstrates residential behaviour patterns in the decades of extreme growth in the city of Madrid, with increases of over 300% in peripheral areas over a period of only 15 years. This growth is largely made up of unskilled populations, in contrast to the populations which appear in the analysis of the city centre and expansion districts. These areas also grew rapidly at this time, but the population contingent was different: the new middle classes and goods and service industry workers were concentrated in expansion districts; while the working population resided in central areas alongside more skilled households.

Fig. 11.2
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Data source 1967 FOESSA report

Population change according to socioeconomic condition and urban area of residence, 1950–1965.

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Over the years of development, 1960s to 1970s, an explosion in land rezoning beyond the Master Plans occurred. This was in response to pressure from landowners and the large construction and real estate companies of the Francoist oligarchy. This drive was based on the struggle for capital gains and concessions in what can be considered the first wave of reckless town planning in Spain. This period saw an intensification of real estate development along Spanish coasts and a boom of migration from the countryside to the city (Naredo 2010). In this context, the scope of the 1963 General Urban Development Plan went beyond the limits of the municipality to incorporate the metropolitan area. According to Caprarella and Hernández (2008), the province of Madrid grew by more than one and a half million inhabitants between 1962 and 1975. Of this growth, nearly one million people were immigrants from rural Spain constituting an actual annual growth rate of 4%, rather than the 2.5% that had been estimated in the 1963 General Plan (Molinero and Ysas 1998 in Caprarella and Hernández 2008).

This urban development process can be summarised in the words of the very first minister of the Francoist Ministry of Housing, José Luis Arrese, who laid out the real estate model not only of that time but also for its future designs, when he said: ‘We do not want a Spain of proletarians but of property owners.’ Effectively, the relative importance held by renters in public housing developments shifted towards deferred access to property (involving periods of 20–50 years and based on very favourable monthly payments for aspiring owners). Similarly, the few rental houses built by public agencies and other entities were sold to tenants over the 1960s, with the support of the 1960 Horizontal Property Act (Tatjer 2005). From then on, a formative period in Spanish housing policy began, the purpose of which turned out to be paving the way for private investment in Spanish cities (Vinuesa et al. 2009).

From the end of the 1970s onwards, this urban development process became the cornerstone of local policy in the first stage of democracy (1978–1990). This is due to concerns raised in political and social settings about the urban problems inherited from the previous era: infrastructure, services and equipment deficits, as well as excess population density and the environmental deterioration linked to the mismanaged internal migration process (Ortiz 2006; Terán and Sánchez de Madariaga 1999). The arrival of democratic councils also prompted changes in decision-making processes for urban policies, where a key role was played by the different neighbourhood associations that had ended up integrating themselves into political life based on their militancy in leftist parties like the Communist Party of Spain, thanks to the tremendously effective social mobilisation of that time.

In short, with the arrival of the democratic city councils after the 1979 local elections, three main public policies were created in terms of housing and urban development: (1) the protection of heritage, (2) the eradication of chabolas (large squatter settlements) in the city and (3) the remodelling of neighbourhoods built under public policies in the 1950s and 1960s, which, due to their low quality, had very serious shortfalls (Ortiz 2006). In Madrid (1975–1990) 29 interventions to eradicate chabolas and remodel neighbourhoods took place, which led to the creation of 38,000 housing units, largely in the city’s most disadvantaged peripheries in which the role of neighbourhood movements was key for the realisation of these works (Villasante et al. 1989).

The Neighbourhood Remodeling Plan was the Ministry of Public Works’ response to loud and persistent demands from residents which, in the mid-1970s, with the assistance of left-wing political parties, lead to demonstrations, gatherings and people’s assemblies. This response came when the central government was very weak politically, due to an economic crisis, and the aim of the plan was twofold: to avoid the political cost that the continuous neighbourhood demonstrations entailed and to boost a construction sector in crisis (Vinuesa 2002; Morán and Aja 2006). The most important aspects of this plan were the requirements for the population to be rehoused in the neighbourhood of origin, for the property regime of the homes affected to remain the same and for special models for housing finance and compensation updates. In this way, the original population composition of these neighbourhoods was respected.

Today, these large housing estates have followed diverse trajectories within a wider context of increasing urban vulnerability. This is due to the differing exposure of these large housing estates to both the ongoing socioeconomic crisis and the inflow of many impoverished international immigrants into the city of Madrid. Through this lens, we systematically analyse how these large housing estates have been diversely affected by these processes since the 1990s, when the Neighbourhood Remodeling Plan came to an end.

3 Data and Methods

The first criterion under which large housing estates were selected for analysis relates to their classification into the three most prominent housing development models adopted in Madrid over the period of study: the first public interventions of the Francoist period undertaken from 1940 to 1975, private housing developments from 1945 to 1985 and the Neighbourhood Remodeling Plan from 1975 to 1990. These three initiatives accounted for a total of 246 interventions and 323,000 homes in the city of Madrid between 1940 and 1990 (Lopez de Lucio et al. 2016).

The selection of large housing estates from each of these three housing development types was restricted to those developments that included at least 1,000 homes. We attempted to cover diverse types of public housing development from the Francoist period with regard to construction, size and designs available and selected those developments of larger scope from the Neighbourhood Remodeling Plan. Among private housing developments, 11 large housing estates were selected, and include both social housing and non-social housing and constructions from the four decades studied in diverse type and form of buildings as defined in the Urbanism and Urban Design Guide by López de Lucio et al. (2016). Table 11.1 shows the relative importance and distribution of the 29 chosen large housing estates in each of the three types of development, which cover about half the homes built in this period (44.8%).

Table 11.1 Distribution of interventions and housing by type of housing development
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The typical large housing estates consist of a series of free standing buildings with at least four storeys of apartments, superblocks and free access open spaces between buildings. These large housing estates are located in dense neighbourhoods with an important fabric of local commerce as well as sufficient public facilities. Also, they are close to large green spaces, which are often poorly maintained. These large housing estates are next to the main ring roads of the city and also have access to the system of public buses, although they are unevenly connected to the subway system (Figs. 11.3 and 11.4). Finally, and unlike most of the previous large housing estates, in the Neighbourhood Remodeling Plan, there was a clear interest to configure streets or avenues that produce recognisable urban spaces (Fig. 11.5).

Fig. 11.3
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Source Daniel Sorando, March, 2018

Grupo Marcelo Usera, a large public housing estate.

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Fig. 11.4
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Source Daniel Sorando, March, 2018

Barrio de la Estrella, a private large housing estate.

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Fig. 11.5
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Source Daniel Sorando, March, 2018

Poblado Dirigido de Orcasitas, a remodelled large housing estate.

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The characterisation of the selected large housing estates recent trajectories was established using two complementary approaches. First, we have used an index establishing an urban vulnerability value for each neighbourhood in which the analysed large housing estates are located. Specifically, we have used the Urban Vulnerability Index (Uceda 2016). This index has been applied as the main dependent variable to understand the current degree of socio-residential deterioration for this type of large housing estate. This index is based on factorial principal components analysis (PCA), which synthesises the information contained among five variables related to urban vulnerability; the percentage of economic immigrants, the unemployment rate, the population lacking education, the number of houses in poor states and dwellings without heating, into a single factor that represents the latent dimension of said phenomenon. Second, to classify the resident population within the large housing estates under study, socio-demographic variables are included, like the percentage born abroad (in the absence of statistical information on the most stigmatised ethnic minority in Spanish cities, which is the Roma population), the rate of unemployment and the percentage of the diverse types of housing tenure system (property, rent, assignment, etc.) This information was obtained from the large housing estates under studies census tracts from 1991, 2001 and 2011, and the aim in obtaining it was to discern the evolution of their trajectories over recent decades.

The independent variables included were those relating to the type of housing development (public from the Francoist phase, private, and from the neighbourhood remodelling phase), the decade of construction and the central or peripheral location of each large housing estates. Location is extremely important in the case of the city of Madrid, given the great inequality between central districts and the inner metropolitan ring (Leal and Sorando 2016; Uceda 2016).

4 Types of Social Change in Large Housing Estates in Madrid (1991–2001)

Regarding social composition, the large housing estates analysed follow four different trajectories from 1991 to 2001. Table 11.2 shows the average value for the complexes included in each of these trajectories for each of the main components shaping their evolution, the percentage of the population born abroad and the unemployment rate and the main housing tenure arrangement. Each large housing estate is classified based on the values held by said components, according to the importance given to them in the literature on this neighbourhood type (Hall et al. 2005)

Table 11.2 Characteristics of large housing estates by trajectory type
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Table 11.3 classifies the large housing estates into trajectory type and shows the evolution of its Urban Vulnerability Index. The first type of trajectory is composed of large housing estates whose Urban Vulnerability Index values remain below average in 2001 and 2011 (meaning that these large housing estates are privileged). These large housing estates were built from the 1940s and 1950s onward, largely in private housing developments located in the city centre (including the only two public developments classified within this type.) These are the social spaces of a native population with high socioeconomic status, and despite being the place of settlement for some of the first foreign immigrants (both in 2001 and again in 2011), the foreign immigrant population is shown to be remarkably underrepresented. Similarly, the unemployment rate was systematically lower than that of the rest of Madrid for the duration of the period studied (1991–2011). Thus, the social composition of these neighbourhoods stems from the maintenance of their privileged position in the residential market at the time of their construction, as well as from the rather restrictive criteria imposed on free market access that have facilitated the maintenance of socially privileged and homogeneous neighbourhoods. Essentially, these are privately developed large housing estates which retain a privileged position in terms of urban vulnerability.

Table 11.3 Urban vulnerability index for large housing estates by trajectory type
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The second type of trajectory is formed of large housing estates, which, starting from an elevated situation of urban vulnerability in 2001, improve relative position due to the good conditions of the homes, although their urban vulnerability values are still above the city average. The large housing estates included in this trajectory are the result of the Neighbourhood Remodeling Plan and are in the urban periphery. They replaced the old chabolas and are appalling public housing developments built in the first decades of the Francoist period. The ethnic homogeneity of the resident populations of these large housing estates is striking as the foreign immigrant population is significantly underrepresented throughout the period studied (1991–2011). The low percentage of rental housing throughout the period explains the absence of the immigrant population, given that this is their main way of accessing housing in Madrid (of people born abroad 60.1% resided in rented homes in 2011 while for the population born in Spain the figure is at 12.9%). Overall, the native resident population in these neighbourhoods can be said to remain due to a combination of two key factors: the quality of their homes, and the fact that they own them. Lastly, the unemployment rate is systematically higher than the average both in Madrid and in the large housing estates studied. To summarise, these are frozen neighbourhoods that are characterised by housing units in good residential conditions and an ageing native population that is vulnerable in the labour market.

The remaining trajectory types are both characterised by the settlement of a significant foreign immigrant population from 2001 to 2011, albeit to differentiated degrees. The third type is formed by large housing estates for which vulnerability values remain within the municipality’s average from 2001 to 2011, except in the cases of two public housing development areas where the values are extremely elevated (Poblado Dirigido of Caño Roto and Gran San Blas). These large housing estates housed elderly working-class native populations in 2001 and incorporated a new foreign population over the following decade. These are spaces which went from having below average representations of foreign immigrant populations at the start of the migratory cycle (1991–2001) to slightly above average representations in 2011. These new residents mainly settled in rental housing according to the openings available that were either caused by vacancies left by the native population who took advantage of the real estate bubble to move to other neighbourhoods or due to the availability of empty housing that was mobilised for the rental market. In this regard, an increase in the relative importance of rental housing accounts for most of the increase in the absolute number of main dwellings. However, the changes in demographic composition did not alter the tendency for the rate of unemployment to be systematically higher than the Madrid average (though this rate is average for the large housing estates studied). Four of the seven large housing estates that make up this type were built by public housing developments during the 1950s and 1960s, when a maximalist criterion prevailed (based on the construction of the maximum number of houses using the lowest possible budget) resulting in inferior quality buildings. Furthermore, a neighbourhood that was remodelled in democracy and two privately developed neighbourhoods (Ciudad Parque Aluche and Barrio del Pilar) also form part of this type, and their peripheral development process meant that they were built in stages with varying architecture and planning quality.

Finally, the fourth type of trajectory is made up of large housing estates whose Urban Vulnerability Index grew remarkably between 2001 and 2011. These are neighbourhoods with a native working-class presence and a significant foreign population that settled there from 2001 to 2011, in which time the unemployment rate also increased significantly. All large housing estates included in this type correspond to public housing developments located in the city’s peripheries that were started in the 1950s and followed the maximalist criteria. In these large housing estates, the high percentage of agreements for grants of use and property in 1991 and 2001 was very notably reduced in 2011, as the percentage of rented properties increased with the increase in the stock of main dwellings throughout the entire period.

In short, the divergent trajectories of the large housing estates analysed in the city of Madrid reveal the relevance of certain key factors. In the first place, the initial characteristics of these large housing estates (in terms of type of promotion, building quality and social composition) significantly condition the structure and transformation of their social and demographic composition. Regarding initial social composition, the original criterion through which each housing development could be accessed is key. As observed above, in the case of public housing developments from the Francoist period, these were responses to the scarce supply of private housing for the period’s large low-income populations. In the case of private housing development, 42% of developments of more than 500 homes built between 1940 and 1985 did not have any public subsidies or restrictions, so they were aimed at an economically solvent population (Lopez de Lucio et al. 2016). Public subsidies for the remaining developments were managed using different regulations, among which the variety of different low-income versions stood out. Lastly, homes included in the Neighbourhood Remodeling Plan were intended for those residents in substandard dwellings (making up approximately 35,000 dwellings), as well as for rehousing those already living in mediocre quality subsidised housing in homes with better conditions from the first decades of the Francoist period.

Thus, private housing developments are characterised by the permanence of homogenous native populations in high social positions. In contrast, public housing developments with appalling conditions built under Francoism are characterised by ethnically heterogeneous working-class populations. Between both development types, the evolution of neighbourhood remodelling developed by the first democratic governments is revealing. In this case, the better conditions of these public housing developments, as well as the accessibility to homeownership for their traditional occupants, led to the permanence of native working classes in buildings in good condition. In this regard, the fact that some public housing developments were remodelled, and others were not closely related to neighbourhoods’ capacities to mobilise during the transition to democracy. The availability of facilities and public housing that met minimum standards of habitability blocked some neighbourhoods protests while favouring others, resulting in diverse processes of social change over the following decades. In this context, institutional factors were also key, given that the political conditions that enabled neighbourhood groups to exert influence at the start of democracy (in a context of governmental weakness) made processes that were banned during the Franco regime possible.

Lastly, the location of the large housing estates is another decisive factor for subsequent transformations (see Fig. 11.6). In this regard, the density of private housing developments is higher when they are located on limited land in the city centre. In contrast, the few examples of private housing developments on the peripheries of the city have more land available to them, which is, however, offset by lower quality urban facilities. These large housing estates have therefore been built in various stages, with improvements to facilities at every stage, bringing about social mixing that is the result, rather than the intention of real estate speculation strategies. On the other hand, public housing developments are located on non-privatised public land, which is mostly located on the periphery. This condition is key in a social space that is as segregated as Madrid, given that it limits the chances that these large housing estates have to be revalued. In conclusion, in the large housing estates analysed, social group permanence, and succession can be observed, and these processes are powerfully conditioned by a series of factors that differentiate them: the large housing estates development type, their geographical position, the quality of their original construction, (as well as its urban insertion in terms of facilities and transport links), their initial social composition, the social mobilisation of their neighbourhoods and the institutional context.

Fig. 11.6
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Source Compiled by the authors based on the Population Censuses of 1991, 2001 and 2011 (INE)

Location and trajectory of large housing estates.

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5 Challenges and Political Response

Three underlying processes determine the recent trajectory and near future of the large housing estates analysed, and each of them significantly affects its social and built environments: social polarisation of Madrid’s urban society; its increasing ethnic heterogeneity; and the volatility of its institutional context.

6 Social Polarisation and Ethnic Diversity

In relation to the first process, the large housing estates analysed occupy various positions in the residential market of Madrid in an increasingly polarised social space (Leal and Sorando 2016). As a consequence, the less attractive large housing estates (public housing developments which have not been remodelled and located in the southeast periphery) are located where filtering processes caused by these large housing estates loss in market value took place. As a result, some of the higher income households migrated to new housing developments that were more competitive, taking advantage of the wealth effect of the real estate bubble (López and Rodríguez 2010; Naredo 2010). In Spain, the children of the first generations that settled in these large housing estates from rural areas are the main players in the processes of ascending social mobility, thanks (in part) to the democratisation of the educational system. Often, it is this population who abandoned these large housing estates for more attractive housing developments (Pareja-Eastaway et al. 2003). This process is both a cause and a consequence of the arrival of new households with fewer resources (mainly foreign immigrants employed in the lowest paid jobs) who occupied these complexes because of the relatively lower prices of these homes, honouring classic patterns of invasion/succession (Grigsby et al. 1987).

In contrast, large housing estates with better residential conditions (due to either their original private development or their remodelling in the early years of democracy) that still retain homeownership as the main form of tenure, retain their original population to a much greater extent. In these neighbourhoods, no increase in the foreign immigrant population is observed, and the original residents continue to live in them, and either have high social status (in private housing developments) or vulnerable positions in the labour market (in remodelled housing developments). This process confirms Prak and Priemus’ model (1986) in that the fact of physical decline is not bound to the spiral of social decline in these neighbourhoods, but presupposes maintenance at privileged levels or improvement from disadvantaged levels on the Urban Vulnerability Index. Events in Madrid certainly seem to confirm the importance of neighbourhood struggles for the fate of large housing estates. In this vein, Temkin and Rohe (1996) point out that the neighbourhoods receive both internal (demographic ageing, physical deterioration) and external (international immigration, unemployment, disinvestment) pressures to which residents and institutions respond in different ways according to the composition of each neighbourhood in terms of capital and its social cohesion (whether collective organisation is weak or strong and whether this leads to the abandonment of the neighbourhood or its defence and pressure on the institutions.)

In Spain, the collective political power of the residents of some housing complexes managed to influence the institutions to make improvements to them (Pareja-Eastaway et al. 2004), as shown by the success of neighbourhoods that managed to obtain improvements to the conditions of their homes (Neighbourhood Remodeling Plan) and neighbourhoods (new urban facilities.) The Madrid experience is telling in one respect, private development large housing estates located on the periphery had notable successes in their demand for urban inclusion thanks to the combination of the militancy of the working-class residents in these large housing estates earliest phases and the bourgeois organisation of the residents in later phases (Castells 1983). In the same way, residents in very deteriorated public housing developments that achieved the inclusion of their neighbourhoods in the Remodeling Plan lived in neighbourhoods that were united around strong leadership, as revealed in the Orcasitas case (Cervero and Agustín 2015). At present, the increase in heterogeneity in some of the large housing estates of greatest urban vulnerability raises questions about the future of these neighbourhoods. Much of the literature suggests that the residential settlement of foreign immigrants in these large housing estates supposes tensions between ethnic groups that hinder social cohesion and urban revitalisation (Skifter Andersen 2003). However, Martín Criado (Criado 2012) argues that the cause of the decrease in community trust in ethnically heterogeneous neighbourhoods is not the presence of immigrants, but the ethnic stratification of Western societies, whose corollary is distrust and alienation among ethnically differentiated agents.

Conversely, the institutional framework appears to be a central variable in each of the stages in which these large housing estates were built. In this regard, the social influence secured in the early years of democracy pertains to a completely different sociopolitical context from that which characterised the production of the first large housing estates at the height of the Francoist regime. The importance of considering this dimension raises questions about the effects of the volatility of urban policy in the case of Madrid. In general terms, in Madrid, as in Spain, the volume of public housing is negligible, and so too are the measures aimed at promoting social mixing, unlike in northern European countries (Andersson and Musterd 2005). Hence, the filtering processes are deployed in a favourable political context, which has peaked in recent years with the sale of a good part of the scarce public housing and land to investment funds, reducing the housing possibilities of the most vulnerable populations. Nevertheless, even in this context, there are examples of public policies co-designed by some of the large housing estates neighbourhoods analysed, whereas the change in municipal government in the 2015 local elections made possible a change in the urban policy of the city.

7 Urban Policies

The objective of different urban policies in the City of Madrid has prioritised the regeneration of various parts of the city. From the 1990s onward, Integrated Rehabilitation Areas involved the physical rehabilitation of certain neighbourhoods, through joint action of all levels of government, but did not include measures relating to economic and social needs. These interventions involved varying degrees of citizen participation across different neighbourhoods: in some neighbourhood demands were incorporated while in others intense social conflict occurred (Díaz-Orueta 2007). These interventions were mostly carried out in the historic centre of Madrid; very few occurred among the peripheries (Leal and Sorando 2013; Hernández Aja et al. 2015).

Of all the municipal urban policies carried out over the last two decades, three types of interventions stand out: Special Plans of Investment and Intervention (known by its Spanish acronym, PEIA) the Planes de Barrio (Neighbourhood Plans) and the Madrid Recovers Plan (known by its Spanish acronym, MAD-RE). All these initiatives ultimately aim to promote socio-economic rebalancing and counter the existing inequalities in the city of Madrid.

The PEIA are territorial intervention programs that, based on the active participation of citizens in their design and management, articulate diverse types of policies and interventions aimed at correcting socio-economic, urban and non-residential imbalances of different districts in relation to the rest of the city (Ayuntamiento de Madrid 2008). Such interventions focus on the construction of facilities in disadvantaged districts. The districts where PEIA have been implemented include those of the large housing estates analysed. These programs involved a total investment of more than 650 million euros from 2004 to 2013 in the city of Madrid.

The Neighbourhood Plans consist of more localised actions, and the selection of urban spaces eligible to receive aid is carried out by the City Council and the Regional Federation of Neighbourhood Associations of Madrid (known by its Spanish acronym, FRAVM) in a consensual manner. In this regard, many of the public housing developments of the Francoist period and the large housing estates that were the object of the Neighbourhood Remodeling Plans have been the objects of these Neighbourhood Plans.

The objective of these plans is to empower the resident population in these types of disadvantaged neighbourhoods, so they do not include investment in infrastructure or facilities (which are reserved for the PEIA and the MAD-RE plans.) In this way, the budget is devoted entirely to the promotion of social, economic and labour interventions. Once the neighbourhoods are determined, the process of identifying problems and solutions is initiated by District Boards and local associations (not only neighbourhood associations). After this, they are subject to technical and budgetary evaluation by the local government departments involved, who consider other action plans for territorial rebalancing coming from Madrid City Council. The budget from 2009 to 2014 was of more than 40 million euros (Ayuntamiento de Madrid 2014). During the process, the proceedings are monitored by a citizen commission, made up of agents from District Boards and departments of the City Council itself and from public entities, that negotiates between the administration and residents.

Lastly, the MAD-RE Plan consists in generating economic grants designed to encourage and promote construction and/or interventions to improve the accessibility, conservation and energy efficiency of existing residential buildings. These grants target buildings located in the 120 Preferential Areas for Urban Regeneration approved by Madrid City Council in 2017 (Ayuntamiento de Madrid 2016). The parameters that determine the inclusion of the areas to be regenerated include aspects such as the age of the buildings and their quality, the percentage of elderly residents and the percentage lacking education. For the 2017–2019 grants, the Madrid City Council has allocated 49.2 million euros.

Overall, policies aimed at the socio-economic rebalancing of the city of Madrid have focused on historically disadvantaged areas. The programs directed towards the improvement of housing stock (PEIA and MAD-RE) as well as those destined to improve the socioeconomic conditions of the population that reside in these vulnerable areas (Neighbourhood Programs) share spatial locations of intervention; many of them were carried out in 1940–1975 public development neighbourhoods and the large housing estates with trajectories that show increases in urban vulnerability from the 1975–1990 Neighbourhood Remodeling Plan (see Fig. 11.7).

Fig. 11.7
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Source compiled by the authors based on Ayuntamiento de Madrid (2008, 2014)

Location of large housing estates, PEIA and neighbourhood plans.

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8 Conclusion

The trajectories of large housing estates built in Madrid from 1940 to 1990 were conditioned by the combination of their initial characteristics, their neighbourhoods’ processes of mobilisation and the institutional context in which they were developed. Thus, the Francoist regime restricted all social mobilisation promoting a right to the city that contradicted its own segregated housing policy, a policy which was driven by the interests of the regime’s oligarchy that was not inclined toward promoting social mixing. This was the panorama in which neighbourhood associations became the only channel for the expression of political and social unrest during the final years of Francoism. Associations assumed a leading role in mobilisations for the first years of democracy, when organised neighbourhoods with the worst urban and residential conditions found a favourable context in which to get their demands met. As a result, some of the publicly developed large housing estates obtained a level of residential stability thanks to remodelling, although they retained a high degree of social vulnerability that contrasted to the privileged position of the privately developed large housing estates. Conversely, the remainder of the publicly developed large housing estates built under Francoism have deteriorated over recent decades and are subject to a process of succession, whereby the most vulnerable groups (particularly the most impoverished foreign migrants) settle in this type of neighbourhood due to their weak position in the housing market. The result is a process of stigmatisation by which the most stigmatised social groups reside in housing complexes with equally stigmatised positions in the city, and the taint of space is added to those of ethnicity and poverty (Wacquant 2008). This is a novelty within the context of South European cities. The RESTATE project concluded that large housing estates located in cities like Madrid and Milan have used to be characterised by a large percentage of native elderly people who owned their homes (van Kempen et al. 2005a). This seems to be still the case of both the privately developed large housing estates and public large housing estates which were remodelled in democracy. However, there is another development trajectory of the large housing estates in Madrid that shows a new and socially relevant pattern: a process of succession by which many native neighbors left the most dilapidated large urbanizations, leaving empty spaces occupied by foreign immigrants who did not live in these areas before. This new socio-spatial configuration poses great challenges to the future of these large housing estates. In this scenario, the plans implemented to compensate for these imbalances have not managed to repair the dynamics of an urban and social model that is increasingly dual. In a new, more favourable institutional setting, these large housing estates are characterised by increasing ethnic diversity and social vulnerability, a combination that poses a challenge for neighbourhood organisation, the only strategy from the recent history of these large housing estates to improve social environments and residential living.