Restructuring Cities: Miracles and Mirages in Urban Revitalization in Bilbao

Abstract

Abstract After two decades of uninterrupted decline, metropolitan Bilbao is experiencing an extraordinary ‘urban renaissance’. The basis for this transformation has been the setting up during the 1990s of a myriad of initiatives and projects aimed at reorganizing the physical and socio-economic profile of the city and launching a process of revitalization. Urban policy has played a crucial role in this process, heavily supported by strategic investments in large transport and infrastructure projects that have paved the road to metropolitan regeneration. As a result, in less than a decade, Bilbao has jumped from being an archetype of a declining industrial city to become the new ‘Mecca of urbanism’ (Masboungi 2001), the flagship of which is the Guggenheim Museum.

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