Urban planning and neighborhood participation. The case of La Rondilla in the city of Valladolid in the 1970s

Abstract

In the national context of the 1970s, a period when private development began to stand out against public activity, the sector of La Rondilla, in Valladolid, started to be built. Close to the historical center of the city, La Rondilla became one of the most paradigmatic examples of a lack of facilities and services in the history of Spanish urban planning. In the years that followed its materialization, the remaining undeveloped areas, known by the name of the Ribera de Castilla, became the object of several proposals for residential development. The main aim of this paper is to study these proposals and clarify the role played by the Asociación Familiar La Rondilla within a context of clear collective scarcity: its involvement, as neighborhood watch patrol groups, in the need to satisfy the demand for equipment and services in an area of high residential density and its participation in urban planning and urban action guidelines. This is a strategic form of behavior which has re-emerged forcefully in the present period.