Session at EUGEO 2025 Congress

Session Abstract

Geographic marginalization processes are often linked to areas with physical or human limitations, particularly territories on the periphery of socioeconomic development. As a result, remote and rural areas have frequently been the focus of studies on marginality. However, urban areas —even those well-positioned in an increasingly globalized and competitive world— also exhibit processes of marginality, or micro-marginality, which often coexist with internal borders and barriers in an increasingly fragmented urban environment.

In the 21st century, cities face significant challenges, having experienced years of neoliberal policies and the repercussions of the great recession. The mobility of financial and investment capital, alongside tensions in the real estate market—often exacerbated by the rise of urban tourism and gentrification—contributes to the emergence of disconnected and fragmented urban spaces. These phenomena are key indicators of inequality and marginality within cities.

In this context, the session aims to develop a conceptual framework for analyzing urban micro-marginality and its relationship with urban fragmentation. By reviewing the most suitable techniques and methods for various scales of analysis and applying them to different case studies, the session looks to explore the causes and effects of these urban dynamics. Additionally, contributions are expected to evaluate the implementation of public policies and the roles of different stakeholders in the current complex urban scenario.

Presentations

The Housing Emergency and the Declaration of Areas with Regulated Rents in Spain

Juan M. Parreño Castellano, Claudio Moreno Medina, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain

Since the mid-2010s, the difficulties in accessing housing, whether through ownership or rental, have been increasing, to the point that the housing issue has now become the main social problem for Spaniards. This situation, in addition to fostering housing exclusion, is driving processes of segregation and residential fragmentation. In this context, several regulatory texts have been approved in recent years with the aim of reversing the situation. The recent 2023 Housing Law, passed by the Spanish Parliament, opens the possibility of declaring areas with regulated rents (zonas tensionadas) to control rental prices. This contribution aims to highlight the housing emergency currently unfolding in Spain and to analyze one of the most controversial measures: the declaration of areas with regulated rents. Using secondary statistical sources, regulatory analysis, and the study of reports, the goal is to provide a concise overview of the severity of the problem and its causes, the principles and instruments involved in declaring these new areas, and the results that have been achieved so far.

Reproduction of Marginality and Renewed Urban Fragmentation in the Northeastern Regeneration Front of Barcelona.

José Ignacio Vila Vázquez, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain

In the current context of scarcity of affordable housing stock, local governments have regained the interest in neighbourhoods characterised by decaying mass housing estates at the margin of the metropolitan core. However, persistent issues of social exclusion among their residents, along with high degree of social stigmatisation, significantly hinder the success of long-term urban regeneration and redevelopment processes. This paper analyses whether urban fragmentation is being consolidated in this type of neighbourhoods even if significant metropolitan-scale interventions have been undertaken.

To this end, this contribution focuses on the urban sector between the Fòrum-Besòs and La Mina neighbourhood in the core of the metropolitan area of Barcelona. Since the 2000s, this area has been defined by traditional mass housing estates undergoing a long and complex transformation programme, as well as the extension of the Diagonal axis to the Mediterranean Sea. This last intervention has both included the development of high-profile cultural facilities and led to a redesign of the seafront.

Using a mixed-method approach—including socio-economic data analysis, formal analysis of urban fabric, semi-structured interviews, and guided walks with key stakeholders and residents of these neighbourhoods—this paper examines both the evolution of persistent forms of marginality and the physical and mental urban barriers that reshape these urban spaces. The findings from this case study in Barcelona encourage a discussion of how urban regeneration processes, which aim to transform consolidated urban fabrics and promote greater social integration of marginalised neighbourhoods, may paradoxically lead to the emergence of new forms of urban fragmentation. On the one hand, social marginality may be reproduced in certain parts of the stigmatised neighbourhoods; on the other, stakeholders and residents identify new barriers that delineate contrasting urban fragments.

Residential insecurity and social exclusion. Squatting geographies of Barcelona.

Dolores Sánchez-Aguilera, Anna Torres-Delgado, Josep Coma-Guitart, University of Barcelona, Spain

In the wake of the crisis that began in 2008, the issue of housing - especially evictions and, as a consequence, apartment occupations - has become a matter of growing social concern.

While eviction processes were a recurrent problem in the last decade, when the economy began to recover, difficulties in accessing affordable housing became a central issue in the political and social debate in Spain. The shortage of social housing due to the lack of public investment in housing construction, together with the pressure exerted on cities by the development of tourist housing platforms, which have expanded at an accelerated pace, contribute to stressing the residential market and are an exponent of social and economic inequalities.

In this context of serious difficulties associated with residential insecurity, this paper aims to approach the processes of marginalization and fragmentation in the city of Barcelona, one of the most affected by housing problems, based on a study of housing occupation in different neighborhoods of the city. The analysis of housing ads in the most important real estate portals, such as Idealista, allows us to identify the areas most affected by this problem and to characterize the housing typologies in the case of Barcelona. The results highlight the dissymmetries between different neighborhoods and show the geographies of the processes of residential exclusion.

Session Abstract

Geographic marginalization processes are often linked to areas with physical or human limitations, particularly territories on the periphery of socioeconomic development. As a result, remote and rural areas have frequently been the focus of studies on marginality. However, urban areas —even those well-positioned in an increasingly globalized and competitive world— also exhibit processes of marginality, or micro-marginality, which often coexist with internal borders and barriers in an increasingly fragmented urban environment.

In the 21st century, cities face significant challenges, having experienced years of neoliberal policies and the repercussions of the great recession. The mobility of financial and investment capital, alongside tensions in the real estate market—often exacerbated by the rise of urban tourism and gentrification—contributes to the emergence of disconnected and fragmented urban spaces. These phenomena are key indicators of inequality and marginality within cities.

In this context, the session aims to develop a conceptual framework for analyzing urban micro-marginality and its relationship with urban fragmentation. By reviewing the most suitable techniques and methods for various scales of analysis and applying them to different case studies, the session looks to explore the causes and effects of these urban dynamics. Additionally, contributions are expected to evaluate the implementation of public policies and the roles of different stakeholders in the current complex urban scenario.

Presentations

Shared Spaces in the Everyday Life of a Medium-Sized City: Beyond Hägerstrand

José Lasala Fortea, Carme Bellet Sanfeliu, Universitat de Lleida, Spain

One of Hägerstrand's main contributions to the study of daily activities was the development of a technique that allows for the three-dimensional representation of practices through space-time prisms (Hägerstrand, 1970). These prisms form the contexts in which individuals carry out their daily lives. The so-called Geographies of Everyday Life (GEL) constitute a widely explored field within the analysis of socio-spatial relations in urban spaces. Academically, this has been approached from four key perspectives: mobility, places, settings, and routines or patterns (Lindón, 2006). However, these analytical perspectives often overlook the meanings, motivations, and contexts underlying individual decisions regarding the potential range of available activities (Ellegård, 1999). In fact, Hägerstrand’s prisms have been criticized for their focus on observable events, neglecting the subjectivity of individuals, as well as their experiences and internal motivations, a limitation acknowledged by the author himself (Hägerstrand, 1978).

The aim of this presentation is to analyse the daily lives of 16 individuals with diverse profiles selected from extreme neighbourhoods in a medium-sized Spanish city (Lleida), neighbourhoods previously identified based on radically opposed socioeconomic characteristics (Bellet et al., 2024). The analysis is carried out through the construction of space-time prisms that incorporate contextual elements transcending traditional geographical analysis. These prisms are constructed using weekly GPS tracking, complemented by interviews conducted with the same individuals.

Thus, this study proposes moving beyond Hägerstrand’s original prism framework, exploring the possibility of integrating additional contexts that characterize everyday activities (Ellegård, 1999). Such contexts are essential to understand the processes of segregation and social exclusion that extend beyond the residential space (Bertrand & Chevalier, 1998). Through this methodological approach, the study seeks to illustrate, using space-time lines, a reflection on the shared urban spaces by the subject of study beyond their strict localization.

In an increasingly fragmented urban reality, do shared urban spaces exist that facilitate interaction between socially differentiated groups? Could such spaces become repositories of shared contexts?

Inner suburbanisation process – as a scene of micro-marginality in regional centres of Hungary 

Gabor Nagy; HUN-REN RCERS, Hungary (the paper has not been presented)

Our long term project concentrate on local housing markets in Hungarian regional centres. As a part of this project we focused on the changing urban (and suburban) space of our cities and their functional urban areas. To deepen our knowledge in this area, we used the detailed dataset of National Census (2011, 2022) in the case of Szeged, to see, how the suburbanisation process is going on.

Comparing to other regional centres, in Szeged, the suburbanisation (as relative deconcentration of inhabitants, housing, urban activities, workplaces etc.) did not mean an emergence of small settlement inside the FUR of the city, but mostly a dynamic deconcentration process inside the administrative borders.

In a wider historical context, we identified symbolic ‘borders’ in the urban area and hot spots of social marginalisation (segregated zones) before the transformation (at the end of socialistic period till the end of the 1980s). We made data-analysis and case-study research in the related areas, concentrating the changing movement of symbolic borders.

The most important result were:

• the segregated zones were partly demolished, but relocated inside the continuous residential areas of the city.

• the symbolic borders were moving out comparing its former location (the “Dam”), eliminating the differences in lifestyle between traditional and new residential zones. The new border of marginalisation laying in between built up areas and scattered farmsteads and some of former gardening zones at 2022.

• The symbolic borders in the minds of local residents living much longer, than the data-analysis suggest, even in the case of local decision makers and professionals (developers, urbanists, housing market actors).

Urban fragmentation as an effect of marginalisation processes. The case of Upper Silesian Conurbation

Krystian Heffner, Piotr Gibas, University of Economics in Katowice, Poland

The processes of economic transformation are causing significant changes in the industrial structure - resulting in the decline and closure of numerous large workplaces. In the cities, hitherto developed based on industry, extensive zones of disused factories and devastated post-industrial buildings are emerging. In parallel, there are profound functional changes occurring in urban centres: a major increase in the significance of service functions is taking place, particularly in commerce, including large-scale retail.

The previous trend of urban population growth is turning into stagnation and permanent depopulation - zones of decapitalised and deprived housing are emerging in the Upper Silesian conurbation. Internal migration (local and regional) shifts the population of Upper Silesian urban centres into the surrounding and more remote, but attractive rural areas. The balance of external migration, with the largest metropolises in Poland and abroad, is also negative.

New housing is only being developed in selected parts of the most important urban centres, mostly in open areas previously used for agriculture, and more rarely on regenerated brownfield areas.

New economic ventures associated with the established Special Industrial Zone are located entirely in the outer zones of the conurbation's cities, using previously uninvested areas (so-called greenfields).

The revitalisation and development activities undertaken do not keep pace with the processes of decapitalisation of residential, service and industrial facilities. The process of local marginalisation of many parts of cities is progressing - as a result, symptoms of progressive fragmentation of the urban environment of the Upper Silesian conurbation are appearing.

The aim of the paper is to show that socio-economic and cultural phenomena combined with the process of marginalisation in local systems (in cities, urban agglomerations) result (among other things) in the fragmentation of urban spaces and the growing development problems of such urban centres. Overcoming the negative changes in the urban space structure of the urban centres of the Upper Silesian conurbation requires long-term external intervention combined with intensive public sector development and the introduction of new growth impulses.

Geographical marginalisation in urban areas

Stanko Pelc, University of Primorska, Slovenia

In our presentation we intend to present some basic constitutive elements of geographical marginality concept and how it is similar and different from the concept of peripheral areas in the Center-Periphery model. As geographical marginnality is a result of marginalisation we intennd to describe some of the most important drivers of marginalisation wiith special focus on the marginalisation processes that are changing existing or new urban areas into areas marked with marginalised social groups and the kind of spatial transformation that the presence of predominantly marginalised population causes.