Real Estate Crisis And Sustainability In Spain

• Published in: WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment 2011-01, Vol.150, p.123
• Main Author: J. L. Miralles i Garcia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Economic crisis; Economic development; Economic growth; Economics; Guanosine diphosphate; Housing; Real estate; Residential areas; Rural areas; Sustainability; Sustainable development; Urban development; Urban planning; Urban sprawl; Urbanization
• ISSN: 1746-448X; 1743-3541
• DOI: 10.2495/SDP110111

The last real estate cycle in Spain is a paradigmatic example of non sustainable development. The extraordinary urban development in the 1997-2007 period produced an extraordinary economic growth based on land speculation and housing. The end of the cycle generates a very severe economic crisis, one that is the most serious economic crisis in a long time. This process has economic, social and environmental repercussions; from the economic point of view Spain has a temporally increased its GDP. The real estate activity has generated houses, and land able to be developed, but without use and without a market. From the social point of view, the Spanish people have changed their system of moral value. It takes as an ideal rapid enrichment without effort and without producing useful goods and services, and from the environmental point of view, on building over an extensive area without use. It is an irreversible process of rural land transformation. All land conversion is carried out by urban planning; the landscape changes and \“urban sprawl” increases.