GIS Analysis of the Consequences of Short-Term Urban Planning in a Mass Tourism Destination in Spain

GIS Analysis of the Consequences of Short-Term Urban Planning in a Mass Tourism Destination in Spain

J. L. Miralles S. García-Ayllón 

Department of Urban Planning, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain

Department of Civil Engineering, Technical University of Cartagena, Spain

Page: 
499-519
|
DOI: 
https://doi.org/10.2495/SDP-V10-N4-499-519
Received: 
N/A
| |
Accepted: 
N/A
| | Citation

OPEN ACCESS

Abstract: 

Urban planning is a lengthy and settled process, the results of which usually emerge after several years or even decades. Therefore, for a proper urban design of cities, it is necessary to use parameters that are able to predict and gauge the potential long-term behaviour of urban development. In the tourist towns of the Mediterranean coast, long-term design is often at odds with the generation of business profits in the short term. This paper presents the results of this phenomenon for an interesting case of a Spanish Mediterranean coastal city created from scratch in the 1960s and turned into a tourist destination, which today is hypertrophied. La Manga del Mar Menor in the Region of Murcia every year reaches a population of more than 250,000 people during the summer, with only a few thousand in winter. This crowded environment with an asymmetric behaviour submits annual progressive impoverishment in its economic return. This questionable profitability is the result of a misguided urban development, and its results are analysed through the evolution of the land market and the resulting urbanization in the last 50 years using a GIS methodology.

Keywords: 

La Manga, mass tourism product, Mediterranean coast urban development, retrospective urban analysis, urban GIS analysis

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