Implementing plans for urban expansion is a privilege reserved to the Northern World. In developing countries, but also in most post-socialist societies, urban growth is taking place with very limited public guidance and intervention. In Southern Europe, the rapid depopulation of rural areas during the post-war economic transformation has triggered off migration streams to the urban centers that have exceeded the planning capacity of the local political-administrative systems. Rome and Madrid provide striking examples for two highly different solutions to the outstanding task of settling many migrants with limited resources. In Rome, almost one million migrants from central and Southern Italy arrived during the 1950s and 1960s. They could find jobs in the booming construction sector, but were not admitted to the urban housing market. Therefore, they were forced to settle in the urban periphery. In the 'General Regulatory Plan' (Master Plan) of Rome almost no land had been assigned for moderate private housing. The settlers could, however, acquire rather large building plots that had been zoned for agriculture from large land owners at moderate prices on an illegal market. There, the settlers built small houses without a building permit. Following the boom of the Italian economy, these self-help cottages could be improved and extended with rising family incomes. In Madrid, where the rural exodus arrived a decade later, the migrants, who came in hundreds of thousands, had to settle also on land which had not been zoned for housing. There, the large landowners managed to optimise their rents by selling or leasing only small plots for cottages. These chabolas had very high occupancy rates and no access to modern amenities. The two cities are providing two alternative models for the integration of poor migrants into the modern urban fabric. In Rome, the absence of the state left room for self-help which the migrants used to build their settlements and houses according to their needs and abilities; in Madrid, the migrants used the opportunity of the political transformation in order to oblige the state to consider their housing needs. The two cases have been studied extensively by a research group at the Institut fur Raumplanung (IRPUD) of the Universitat Dortmund with funding from the German Research Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Urban integration Urban land management Informal development Urban growth

Spain self help urban growth Italy immigrant population Rome Madrid urban planning