National urban policy responses in the European Union: Towards a European urban policy?



10

of Madrid and Barcelona are almost on an equal level, while Germany (after Berlin),
Belgium (after Brussels), Italy (after Rome), and the Netherlands have some quite
equivalent cities and/or a well-balanced urban system. In several countries, the level
between the primate city and the rest of the towns is not, or incompletely, filled. That is
notably true of France, Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Finland. Sometimes the
intermediate level counts only one or a few towns (such as Oporto in Portugal,
Gothenburg and Malmo in Sweden, and Saloniki in Greece). Belgium, Italy, Spain and
United Kingdom do enjoy a relatively balanced hierarchy in which the various urban size
classes are reasonably represented. In many countries a relatively large proportion of the
national populations is spatially concentrated in but a few urban regions. That can be said
of Spain (34 per cent in seven urban regions), Belgium (55 per cent in five), Sweden (35
per cent in three), Finland (22 per cent in one), Denmark (34 per cent in one), Portugal
(39 per cent in two), Luxembourg (55 per cent in one), England (36 per cent in seven),
The Netherlands (40 per cent in the Randstad), Greece (37 per cent in two), and France
(16 per cent in one). The urban concentration seems to proceed fastest in those countries
that have come relatively late to urbanisation, mostly countries that are peripheral to the
European core area, such as Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy (south part),
Greece and Austria. Dominance in size coincides often, but not always, with economic
dominance. In most countries the primate city is also economically dominant. Italy is an
exception: cities like Bologna, Milan and Turin vie with Rome for economic supremacy.

Stages of urbanisation

The phase of urbanisation in which a country, or more accurately, the towns in a country,
find themselves, determines what kind of problems confronts these towns, and also what
is the best policy to cope with them. The problems of old industrial towns at the stage of
decline are hardly comparable with those of fast-growing cities in countries that until
recently were largely agrarian. Europe encompasses the full range of urban-development
phases. The Finnish towns are at the stage of urbanisation; Helsinki is the fastest growing
major city in the EU. Urbanisation also marks many (but not the largest) cities in
Southern Europe. Suburbanisation, the stage at which the urban region is still growing,
mostly thanks to the ring towns, is at the moment the commonest trend, though not
everywhere equally advanced. Some countries have been suburbanising for a long time
(especially such industrial countries as United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, the
Netherlands, and Luxembourg), and some have only recently joined in. Suburbanisation
is a relatively new phenomenon (since the 1970s) in the towns in Italy (north part),
France, Austria, Spain, and even newer (since the 1980s) in Portugal, Ireland, Italy (south
part), Greece (Athens) and Sweden. From that enumeration, clearly the part of Europe
that was in the vanguard of industrialisation and the first to attain prosperity, is at a more
advanced phase of urbanisation than the part that industrialised later. A number of
European cities suffer from disurbanisation, that is, decline of the entire urban region, a
development often attended by problems of economic structure. The affected cities are
mostly old industrial and harbour cities, characterized by one or a few dominating
traditional industrial sectors; examples can be found in United Kingdom (most large
urban regions), the Walloon region, the Ruhr Area, the new German states, Italy (the
North), Spain (among others, the region of Bilbao), and France (Marseilles). With the
exception of the new German states, these cities had often achieved considerable



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