Globalization, knowledge-based activities and new spatial inequalities in Madrid (Spain)

Abstract

The metropolitan region of Madrid has undergone significant changes in the last two decades, establishing it as the main global city with command functions in Southern Europe. This has resulted in a rapid increase in its rates of production and consumption, and the size of its immigrant population, with the processes of low-density suburbanisation and rurbanisation becoming more common. But this trend has been accompanied by significant social and environmental costs, an abrupt standstill since 2008 and the deepening of socio-spatial inequalities within. The progressive growth of the knowledge –based activities is a good indicator of this type of essentially contradictory process which signals the integration of metropolis into global capitalism and the associated territorial forms.