European Journal of Geography

European Journal of Geography 

European Association of Geographers 

2013 

Volume 4 • Number 1 • April 2013, ISSN 1792-1341


The publication of the EJG (European Journal of Geography) is based on the European 

Association of Geographers’ goal to make European higher education a worldwide reference 

and standard. Thus, the scope of the EJG is to publish original and innovative papers that will 

substantially improve, in a theoretical, conceptual or empirical way the quality of research, 

learning, teaching and applying geography, as well as in promoting the significance of 

geography as a discipline. Submissions should have a European dimension. 

Contributions to EJG are welcomed. They should conform to the Notes for authors and should 

be submitted to the Editor, as should books for review. The content of this journal does not 

necessarily represent the views or policies of EUROGEO except where explicitly identified as 

such. 

Editor 

Associate Editor 

Book Review Editor 

Editorial Advisory 

Board 

Kostis C. Koutsopoulos 

Professor, National Technical University of Athens, Greece 

koutsop@survey.ntua.gr 

Yorgos N. Photis 

Professor, University of Thessaly, Volos Greece 

yphotis@prd.uth.gr 

Gerry O’Reilly 

Lecturer, St. Patrick’s College, Dublin, Ireland 

Gerry.OReilly@spd.dcu.ie 

Bailly Antoine, Prof., University of Geneva, Geneva Switzerland 

Bellezza Giuliano, Prof., University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy 

Buttimer Anne, Prof., University College Dublin, Ireland 

Chalkley Brian, Prof., University of Plymouth, Plymouth UK 

Martin Fran, S. Lecturer, Graduate School of Education Exeter S. Vice 

President of the Geographical Association 

Gosar Anton, Prof., University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia 

Haubrich Hartwig, Prof., University of Education Freiburg, Germany 

Nazmiye Ozguc, Prof., Istanbul University, Istanbul Turkey 

Strobl Josef, Prof., University of Salzburg, Salzburg Austria 

Van der Schee Joop, Prof., VU University, Amsterdam The Nederlands 

© EUROGEO, 2013 

ISSN 1792-1341 

The European Journal of Geography is published by EUROGEO - the European Association of Geographers 

(www.eurogeography.eu). 

1


Volume 4 

Number 1 

2013 

CONTENTS 

1 Letter from the Editor 

6 ‘SIMDELTA GLOBAL’- TOWARDS A STANDARDISED INTERACTIVE MODEL 

FOR WATER INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT 

Ties RIJCKEN, David K. CHRISTOPHER 

22 THE USE OF CARTOONS IN POPULAR PROTESTS THAT FOCUS ON 

GEOGRAPHIC, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ISSUES 

Mary TOTRY, Arnon MEDZINI 

36 EUROPE IN MIND: SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF TURKEY-EUROPE 

RELATIONS IN CASE OF TURKISH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS 

Ilkay SUDAS, Melek GOREGENLI 

48 STRATEGIC PLANNING AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN SPANISH 

CITIES 

María J. GONZÁLEZ, María L. DE LÁZARO 

64 MEASURING EQUITY AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH 

ACCESSIBILITY TO PUBLIC SERVICES BY PUBLIC TRANSPORT. THE CASE OF 

THE METROPOLITAN AREA OF VALENCIA (SPAIN) 

María-Dolores PITARCH GARRIDO 

2

Editorial 

Dear Fellow Geographers, 

Experience from serving Geography for a long time and in various positions has 

shown me that there are at least three sets of pressures against the goal of 

implementing and diffusing the basic tenets, themes and tools of Geography. More 

specifically: 

‣ The “from-the-top-down” or institutional pressures which are generated by 

internal research boundary conditions (i.e. specific university research 

publication requirements) that necessitate a specific and not always relevant 

research, which in turn determine the publishable output. 

‣ The “from-the-bottom-up” or market pressures which are created by the fact 

that the financial prerequisites of scholarly activity constrain and often shape 

scientific output efforts: students need jobs and universities financial 

support. That is, in academic decisions regarding research there is the 

omnipresent issue of the market, for employment patterns, opportunities 

and prospects undoubtedly affect graduate programs, research areas and 

even dissertation topics. In other words the papers to be published 

‣ Finally, the “central” or professional pressures are the result of our 

profession’s emphasis on subject areas which the academic community 

thinks as appropriate, but are not always relevant to students, the decision 

makers and the society as a whole, making the publishing materials 

irrelevant. 

These pressures, if the geographic community allows them, are important 

challenges that EJG is facing in enhancing Geography and somehow have to be 

resolved. One might think that the editor or the presidium by instigating well 

thought and effective policies somehow can bring about desirable solutions. But 

is this the case? The answer is a categorical NO. The editor, the presidium or 

even the EUROGEO members cannot resolve these issues, only the Geographic 

community as a whole can successfully address them. And let us assure you that 

the EJG will be there to support any such effort. 

Kostis Koutsopoulos 

National Technical University of Athens 

4

European Journal of Geography, 4:1 

Copyright © European Association of Geographers, 2013 

ISSN 1792-1341 

5

European Journal of Geography Volume 4, Issue 1:6-21, 2013 

© Association of European Geographers 

‘SIMDELTA GLOBAL’- TOWARDS A STANDARDISED INTERACTIVE MODEL 

FOR WATER INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT 

Ties RIJCKEN 

Delft University of Technology, Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Postbus 5 , 2600 AA Delft, 

The Netherlands 

http://home.tudelft.nl/index.php?id=5820&L=0, t.rijcken@tudelft.nl 

David K. CHRISTOPHER 

Indiana University, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, 107 S. Indiana Ave. 

47405-7000 Bloomington, USA 

http://www.indiana.edu/~spea/, christdk@indiana.edu 

Abstract 

The research project ‘SimDelta’ builds on novel internet technology to support the 

development of the Rhine-Meuse delta water infrastructure. It has three goals: education, 

organisation of research and design studies, and stakeholder polling. A current question is 

how the SimDelta technology could be made transferable to systems outside Europe, such as 

in California, Shanghai, Thailand and Indonesia. Fundamentally, all water systems are 

similar. Technically they differ in scale, geometry, resolution and functional emphasis, but 

system boundaries can be standardised. It is essential that SimDelta graphically 

acknowledges different data quality levels, to allow for standardisation and piecemeal 

development. Political coordination of infrastructure improvements appears to be difficult 

everywhere. Since SimDelta aims to clarify connections between high and low scale levels, it 

is expected to benefit the development of any water system. However, strategically it is 

recommended to start with the California system, for reasons of scientific maturity and 

political openness. 

Keywords: Water infrastructure planning, interactive modeling, crowdsourcing, water management, hydraulic 

engineering, adaptive management. 

1. INTRODUCTION 

The use of the internet worldwide is expanding and technology keeps improving, perhaps 

most in the domain of on-line social communities. Complexity of spatial planning and public 

infrastructure is also increasing, because of growing pressure on space, increasing levels of 

education, environmental awareness, democratization and decentralization. Numerous 

interactive internet-based tools have been developed to support planning and public policymaking, 

and they will continue to be improved. Preliminary analysis suggests that most of 

these interactive models are either complex models filling large databases with interfaces 

accessible only to a few experts, or relatively simple ‘serious games’, with an attractive 

European Journal of Geography - ISSN 1792-1341 © All rights reserved 

6

RijckenT. – Christopher K. D / European Journal of Geography 4 1 6-21 (2013) 

interface over a simple model (Van Schijndel 2005; Rijkswaterstaat 2007; van den Roovaart 

en Meijers 2011; Mayer 2009; Bekebrede 2010). Long-term projects that use attractive 

interfaces, complex modeling, and the internet to probe a large group of stakeholders seem to 

be in stages of infancy. Water infrastructure development might be a good field to experiment 

with this combination of complex modeling and fine web-based interface design. 

Infrastructure has a large number of stakeholders and is knowledge-intensive. The costs of 

maintaining an interactive model are small in comparison to investments in national flood 

safety, fresh water supply, shipping, and healthy aquatic ecosystems, which can run into the 

billions a year. 

At Delft University of Technology, the ‘SimDelta’ project aims to build such an 

interactive model for the Dutch Rhine-Meuse delta system (Figure 1). The model has three 

goals. First: education. Interactive features educate and engage the user on the status of the 

current system and explain the interaction between future scenarios, problems and solutions 

in an intuitive way (Figure 2). Second: organisation of research and design activities. 

SimDelta’s standardized graphical language streamlines expertise into a common venue. It 

becomes easier for users to relate different studies to each other, to find related documents 

and to identify data or design gaps. Third: stakeholder polling. Online model users fill in a 

user profile and convey their preferences and criticism in sessions and on discussion forums. 

If enough stakeholders do this seriously, and SimDelta registers their input statistically, this 

will provide information to decision-makers comparable to market-research (Rijcken, T, 

Stijnen, J, en Slootjes, N 2011). 

Figure 1. Schematization of Rhine-Meuse Delta system in the Netherlands. Rivers and channels are 

scaled according to their maximum flow capacity. Reservoirs have been approximately scaled 

according to their storage capacity. 


7


At this moment, SimDelta is working with limited functionality (see www.simdelta.nl). 

Current activities focus on technical and conceptual foundations. Demos are made to study 

usability and improve the interface. The vision is to develop a sufficiently general graphical 

language that allows the model to be applied to water systems elsewhere on the planet. This 

paper will investigate how the SimDelta technology could be made transferable, and whether 

this would be valuable. To what extent do water system objectives differ around the world? 

Do differences in data availability limit a universal applicability of SimDelta? How important 

is scale? Are governments interested in democratization by internet communities? Studying 

these questions, precisely in a stage where the foundations are being laid, will probably result 

in technical modifications and strategic reconsiderations to the concept initially developed for 

the Netherlands. 

Figure 2a. Screen shot of the SimDelta interface in the Rhine-Meuse delta. Dike rings are 

coloured to show the risk of failure based on user-determined specifications (sea level rise, year, and 

design standards or return period). Possible new infrastructure projects (‘solutions’) to prevent failure 

along the highlighted dike segment (a ‘problem’) are shown in purple. 


8


Figure 2b. Some functionalities of the SimDelta demo 2.2. 

2. METHODOLOGY 

The applicability of SimDelta to different water systems is evaluated studying four water 

systems outside Europe, two of which will constitute the core of this paper: the California 

Central Valley water system (US) and the Greater Shanghai water system (China). These 

systems have been selected based on their scale, level of complexity, and integration of 

functions: fresh water supply, flood protection, navigation, and provision of ecological 

services. 

Applicability means whether expanding the SimDelta concept to the other systems would 

be possible and valuable. Four criteria are used: scientific maturity, political feasibility, 

technological maturity, and problem urgency. Scientific maturity examines the availability of 

information about hydrology, existing infrastructure, future scenarios, and possible projects. 

Political feasibility assesses the capacity of governing institutions to implement changes (new 

projects and new operations), and the adaptability of interactive modeling and online polls 

into the current process of decision-making. Technological maturity examines the use of the 

internet in current governance and the ability of the government to mobilize stakeholders 

using E-communication, indicated by the 2008 United Nations E-Governance index. Problem 

urgency indicates the level of traction that an interactive model may generate. It evaluates 

whether the water system problems are on the top of politicians’ lists, or if water 


9


infrastructure development takes a backseat to other political, economic, and environmental 

matters. 

We see two distinct ways to implement the SimDelta concept. First, it could be adopted 

by the highest governing body (the Department of Water Resources in California and the 

Water Affairs Bureau in Shanghai) as the primary way to organize business and plan for the 

future (internal use). Second, SimDelta could be coordinated by an independent entity, such 

as a foundation or a university, and maintained by research subsidies, student projects, and 

local stakeholder inputs (external use). The internal usage would provide access to a limited 

number of users; external use explicitly aims at mobilising a large crowd of experts and 

stakeholders, with a larger number of users and conceptual links to ‘crowdsourcing’ 

(Surowiecki 2005; Brabham 2010). These avenues of implementation will be informed by 

our examination of the four applicability criteria at the end of the paper. 

3. SIMDELTA APPLIED TO CALIFORNIA, SHANGHAI, THAILAND AND 

INDONESIA 

3.1. Central Valley Water System 

California’s Central Valley spans more than 700 km parallel to the Pacific Coast of the 

United States (Figure 3). The valley is abutted by the Sierra Nevada mountain range to the 

east, which drains into two major arteries: the Sacramento River in the north and the San 

Joaquin River in the south. These rivers join in the California ‘inland Delta’. The Central 

Valley produces nearly 25% of the United States food supply (Struglia, Winter, and Meyer 

2003). The agricultural productivity and high rate of population growth in Southern 

California are fuelled by an extensive man-made network that redistributes water resources 

from the wetter north to the drier south (Lund, J a.o. 2007). The largest structures, the 

California Aqueduct and the Delta-Mendota Canal, flow south from pumping stations in the 

Delta. Other water infrastructure including bypasses, weirs, and levees, have been 

constructed to prevent flooding in the Delta and along rivers in the northern part of the valley. 

Hundreds of reservoirs, lakes, forebays, and retention basins throughout the state store water 

for fresh water supply, recreation, flood prevention, and hydropower. Additionally, the sea 

ports of Sacramento and Stockton, the main rivers and a number of canals in the Central 

Valley form a 460 km long inland waterway network used for shipping (USDOT 2002). 

Maintaining or restoring healthy aquatic ecosystems is a major concern throughout California 

(Hanak a.o. 2011). 

Scientific Maturity: There is an abundance of information on hydrology and 

infrastructure for the Central Valley system available for public use. The United States 

Geological Survey, the California Department of Water Resources, the Federal Bureau of 

Reclamation and many smaller organisations maintain historical logs of construction activity 

and monitor more than 1400 dams (Goslin 2005) and thousands of kilometres of waterways 

and levees. This information has been used to develop elaborate models of California’s water 

resources, for example on predicting changes in water availability as a result of climate 

change and changing land-use scenarios. Some have integrated economic analyses of water 

supply and the implications of extreme drought in California (Harou, J a.o. 2010). Most 

models focus on one function of the system. SimDelta is most valuable in revealing 

relationships between different functions. Not all components of the Central Valley system 

are interconnected, but for example fresh water storage and flood protection can be linked 

through dam height and reservoir operations. Fresh water supply and ecology in the Delta are 

connected through pumping station design and operations, etcetera. 


10


Figure 3. Schematic representation of California’s Central Valley water system. Rivers and channels 

are scaled according to their maximum flow capacity. Reservoirs have been approximately scaled 

according to their storage capacity. 

Political Feasibility: Operation of the Central Valley water system is conducted by 

federal, state, regional and local agencies (Little Hoover Commission 2010). The State 

Department of Water Resources (DWR) is responsible for state-wide management of water 

resources including operating the California Aqueduct and maintaining many levees and 

dams across the state. The federal Bureau of Reclamation owns and operates the Central 

Valley Project, which carries water from the northern part of the valley south through the 

Delta-Mendota Canal. Federal presence is mostly contracted out to regional water authorities 

(Little Hoover Commission 2010). These authorities distribute water resources among 

various water districts. There are many local entities for particular tasks, for example the 

Sacramento Flood Control Agency (SAFCA). 

In 1994, in response to substantial conflict and litigation surrounding management of 

water resources in California, the state established the CALFED Bay-Delta program. 

CALFED’s goal was to protect the ecological viability and fresh water supply in the 

California Delta, improve coordination of the state and federal water projects, and conduct 

long term planning for the state’s water resources (Kallis, G, Kiparsky, M, and Norgaard, R 

2009). Drought and financial shortfalls in the early part of the millennium dissolved much of 

the cooperative spirit that CALFED started to create, and litigation surrounding the 

management of water re-emerged as a driving force of day-to-day operations. Recent 

discussions have called for the reorganization of water management in California to establish 

a centralized agency to coordinate operation between the various stakeholders. Changes in 


11


water management “call not only for new science, but also for new agreements among 

various stakeholders” (Lund, J a.o. 2007) p. 89). The SimDelta graphic framework could 

support this call for more integration while supporting a local focus (Rijcken, T, Stijnen, J, 

and Slootjes, N 2011). 

Technological Maturity: The vitality of national communication technology 

infrastructure is quantified by the United Nations 2008 E-Governance survey. It evaluates 

technological capacity by measuring web integration, internet infrastructure, and human 

capital (United Nations 2008). The United States received an overall score of 0.8644 (out of 

1), which ranks 4 th globally. Consequently, the state of California is in an excellent 

technological position to implement an internet-based interactive model. This model could be 

developed and disseminated within the existing physical and organizational information 

networks. 

Problem Urgency: The most prominent problems in the Central Valley system are fresh 

water shortage risks due to climate variation, climate change and changing land uses, 

impaired ecological health of the Delta and many rivers, increasing flood risks due to 

increased urbanisation, maintenance backlogs and land subsidence (Mount, J en Twiss, R 

2005) and the increasing probability of an earthquake to hit the Delta levees, flooding islands 

with salt water, disconnecting the south from fresh water supply for months on end. Changes 

in the operations and use of existing infrastructure, water conservation and water markets 

offer some solutions (Zetland 2011; Hanak a.o. 2011). The heydays of new infrastructure 

might be over, but additional or modified infrastructure such as canals, bypasses and levee 

upgrades, will always play a role in the future development of the system (CA DWR 2011; 

Lund, J a.o. 2007). This is perhaps best illustrated by the re-emergence of support for the 

‘peripheral canal’, which would transport water from the Sacramento River to the southern 

half of the Valley, bypassing the California Delta. 

The state of California has historically managed large floods and augmented fresh water 

supplies effectively (Lund, J 2012). Similar to the Netherlands, California has a developed 

water system with low probabilities for disasters, but where remaining risks could still be 

lowered cost-effectively. Most citizens, however, have a short memory and may be less 

inclined to take interest in water management without provocation by extreme events 

(Correia, F a.o. 1998). SimDelta precisely aims at explaining how infrastructure 

modifications reduce risks, rather than directly respond to a disaster, and should thus help to 

gain political support for rational risk-reducing investments. 

3.2. Greater Shanghai System 

The major river flowing through Shanghai, China, is the Huangpu River, which originates in 

the Taihu Lake basin, 100 km to the west of the city. It flows east and then north where it 

ends in the Yangtze River near the confluence with the East China Sea (Figure 4). Shanghai’s 

23 million residents generally extract their drinking water from the Huangpu south of the city 

and from the Yangtze river north of Lake Taihu. Multiple drainage canals and control objects 

have been constructed to protect the city from flood threats due to tidal influences, storm 

surges, and excess precipitation, which can top 28 cm in a 24-hour period (Zong, Y en Chen, 

X 1999). Future investments in water infrastructure have been planned mostly to improve the 

treatment and disposal of sewage, and to protect against various kinds of flooding. These 

projects will have to be implemented carefully to avoid disrupting Shanghai’s inland and sea 

shipping industry, which includes the third busiest port in the world (Capineri, C en Randelli, 

F 2007). 


12


Figure 4. Schematic representation of the Huangpu water system. Rivers and channels are scaled 

according to their maximum flow capacity. Reservoirs have been approximately scaled according to 

their storage capacity. 

Scientific Maturity: There is a substantial amount of information about the hydrology, 

water quality, and infrastructure on the Huangpu River System. The Chinese government 

monitors precipitation, discharge, and water quality at three primary hydrological stations 

along the main river. Additional data collection has been conducted by a variety of local and 

national organizations, as well as academic researchers. However, information is tightly 

controlled by Chinese officials (Gleick, P 2008). The concept of SimDelta is largely based on 

the free-flow of information. The ‘suppliers’ of concepts for water infrastructure projects 

(mostly engineers, architects and local stakeholders) utilize SimDelta to integrate their 

designs within the greater water system. A lack of accessibility may limit the input of project 

proposals and stymie the collaborative process. Recent legal and institutional developments 

have laid the groundwork for a more open system of information exchange, but have yet to 

realize their full potential (Gleick, P 2008). For example, the Environmental Impact 

Assessment Law was passed in 2003, largely in response to public anger about pollution in 

China’s waterways. The law “encourages relevant units, experts and the public to participate 

in the EIA process in appropriate ways” (Eng, M en Ma, J 2006). Broader involvement in the 

decision-making process is likely to expand as channels of communication are established 

between the Chinese government and water infrastructure stakeholders. Still, the Shanghai 

system could be called mature in a sense of data availability, but the global data accessibility 

required for SimDelta is an issue. 


13


Political Feasibility: Management of water resources in China is conducted by a variety 

of national, provincial, and municipal agencies (Gleick, P 2008). National directives 

generally place control of water supply at the municipal level and limit the influence of 

national environmental agencies. In Shanghai, water resources are managed by the Water 

Affairs Bureau, whose various departments oversee water supply, drainage and wastewater 

treatment, groundwater use, water conservation, and flood prevention (Cosier, M en Shen, D 

2009). The Bureau shares flood protection responsibility with the Taihu Basin Authority, 

which is an national agency, and the provincial government. Some responsibilities are jointly 

administered with outside organizations, such as France’s Veolia Group, which owns half of 

Shanghai’s water utility. Other non-governmental entities generally do not play a major role 

in management of the city’s water resources. Gleick (2008) suggests that the network of 

agencies that govern infrastructure, water management, and transportation lack clear 

jurisdictional boundaries, leading to a confusing set of policies with weak enforcement 

mechanisms. This has impaired communication between agencies and reduced management 

efficiency (Cosier, M en Shen, D 2009). Additionally, laws and policies developed by the 

Chinese government have limited the participation of private organizations in water 

infrastructure development (Bellier, M en Zhou, Y 2002). These coordination difficulties 

look somewhat similar to the political problems in California, where historically grown local 

operations seem to impair the advantages of coordination and planning on a higher level, and 

to which SimDelta may provide answers. 

Technological Maturity: According to the United Nations, China’s e-Governance 

ranked 65 th in 2008, ranking lower on the web measure index and infrastructure index than 

the Netherlands and the United States. This score however measures performance at the 

national level and is likely not reflective of the technological capacity in and around 

Shanghai. Still, the Chinese government does not utilize telecommunication technology as 

much as other comparable countries. This may reflect the tendency of Chinese officials to 

limit the distribution of information and exert stronger controls on internet use and content. 

Problem Urgency: Shanghai’s current biggest problems are flood risk, shipping 

capacity, and poor water quality. Shanghai has always disposed waste in and received fresh 

water from the same Huangpu river and its tributaries, resulting in extensive environmental 

pollution and health issues. This problem peaked in the 1980’s and 1990’s and has since been 

mitigated by expanding the treatment infrastructure network (Zhang, C 1997). The growth of 

the Shanghai sea port and hinterland industry is expected to ask for increase of channel 

depths, lock capacities and to remove obstacles and bottlenecks. The risk of flooding comes 

from the sky and the sea. Rainstorms can overflow the urban water system network during 

the plum rain season (when it can rain for weeks on end, in June and July), and the typhoon 

season (with extreme torrential rainstorms, between May and September). When a storm 

surge coincides with astronomic tide, weak segments in the flood defences of the Huangpu 

river embankments (with design standards of 1/100 and 1/200) could be breached (Ren, W 

a.o. 2003; Wu, C a.o. 1999). This never happened between 1984 and 2009, when other floods 

caused 28 deaths but little economic damage (less than 100 million $) (Shi en Cui 2011). 

Future sea level rise, growing peak precipitation, land subsidence and urbanization will 

further increase flood probabilities and consequences (Han, M, Hou, J, en Wu, L 1995). 

These threats have generated support for the construction of a movable storm surge barrier at 

the mouth of the Huangpu River (Wang, J a.o. 2011). This barrier would require careful 

design and operations not to disturb shipping too much. Similar to California and the 

Netherlands, the urgency to improve the Shanghai system is not as much provided by 

frequent disasters, but by rational risk management. It seems there is sufficient complexity 

and urgency for an interactive decision support tool to be of use. 


14


3.3. Water Infrastructure Systems in Developing Countries 

The question if and how the SimDelta concept could be expandable towards a globally 

applicable tool, was also informed by a brief investigation of the Lower Chao Phraya River 

system in Thailand and the Citarum River basin in Java, Indonesia (Table 1). These systems 

face higher climatic variability and bigger threats from flooding, interruptions in fresh water 

supply and water pollution than the Netherlands, California or Shanghai. The general 

scientific maturity of these systems is limited, but investments are made on the basis of some 

information, however limited by western standards. This suggests that SimDelta would need 

to be able to also provide information with lower quality levels than the most detailed 

modeling results, if it would want to be universally applicable. 

Political capacity to coordinate water infrastructure improvements at a national level 

appears to be difficult with all water systems around the world; in California and the 

Netherlands because of gridlocks and stalemates by local disadvantaged stakeholders, in 

Shanghai because of jurisdictional confusion, in Thailand and Indonesia because of limited 

government authority in general. Perhaps an independent interactive tool would be useful in 

most complex systems, even extremely authoritarian or anarchist ones, because issues with 

communication and coordination between different scale levels is intrinsic for large complex 

water systems. 

On the United Nations 2008 e-Governance survey, Thailand ranks 64th and Indonesia 

166th. After the 2011 flooding in Thailand, with over 800 fatalities and US$ 45 billion 

(Jonkman a.o. 2012), problem urgency is now so high that investments will probably be 

decided on before SimDelta is well developed. Even so, in both the Chao Phraya and the 

Citarum systems, many conceivable infrastructure improvements are expected to be costeffective 

because of their early stage of development. 

In Indonesia few people can read English, and Thailand and China do not even use the 

Latin script. This would put even more emphasis on the SimDelta attempt to create a 

language that is so graphic, that it is understandable if one would only see the images and 

understand most of the numbers, allowing users to communicate in the local language on the 

many forums throughout SimDelta. Water infrastructure projects in Thailand and Indonesia 

largely rely on outside funding from the Asian Development Bank and other organizations 

who use English as the working language. SimDelta, with its fundamentals in English, could 

be a communication bridge between international funding organisations and local 

stakeholders. 

4. IMPLICATIONS 

The survey of the four water systems around the world has been conducted in order to change 

some of the technical fundamentals of SimDelta and to contribute to determining the strategy 

for further development. In general, it seems that all water systems serve four primary goals: 

fresh water distribution during dry times, prevent flooding at wet times, facilitate shipping 

and protect aquatic ecosystems at all times. Additional functions are for example recreation, 

raw materials extraction and hydropower generation. In SimDelta, there is a ‘remainder 

category’ to address all possible secondary objectives. From this paper it may appear that a 

primary function is missing, but this is not the case. Hydropower, for example, looks at first 

like a primary water function in California, but from the perspective of the water system it is 

additional to fresh water distribution and flood prevention and can be put in the remainder 

category (in an interactive model on energy distribution, hydropower would be a primary 

element). On a fundamental level, all water systems are the same around the world, but 


15


technically they differ in scale, geometry, density and resolution, functional emphasis and 

data quality. 

Table 1. Main attributes to the five studied systems. 

System 

Service 

area 

(km2) 

Population 

served 

(millions) 

Average 

annual 

precipitation 

(m) 

Discharge 

capacity 

largest 

river 

(m3/s) 

Storage 

capacity 

largest 

reservoir 

(km3) 

Lowest 

point 

(m) 

Max. land 

subsidence 

(cm/ y) 

Rhine- 

Meuse, 

Netherlands 

40.000 15 0,8 

16.000 

(Rhine) 

3,0 

(IJssel Lake) 

-6,7 3,0 

Central 

Valley, 

United 

States 

100.000 30 0,5 

17.000 

(Sacramento) 

5,5 

(Shasta Lake) 

-8 2,3 

Huangpu 

(Shanghai), 

China 

35.000 20 1,1 

10.000 

(Huangpu) 

6,3 

(Taihu Lake) 

1 2,4 

Citarum 

Basin, 

Indonesia 

15.000 25 1,8 - 

3,0 (Jatiluhur 

Reservoir) 

- - 

Chao 

Phraya, 

Thailand 

20.000 10 1,5 

3.000 

(Chao 

Phraya) 

0,78 (Pasak 

Reservoir) 

- - 

4.1. Technical Implications 

The SimDelta interface consists of layers representing the condition of the four main water 

system functions. Users select one or more future scenarios pertaining to projected sea level 

rise, water infrastructure demands, design standards, etcetera. This triggers the model to 

present to what extent preferred water system functions are met, with graphic coding. Lines, 

planes and nodes show existing and conceptual system components. It is often difficult to 

find information, and available information has different quality levels. Studying water 

systems around the world, we found that acknowledging levels of data quality is intrinsic to 

understanding a system. Poor data is not necessarily a reason not to make investments, nor 

would it necessarily lead to bad investments (as shown for example by the historical 

development of the Dutch system). We invented a couple of ways to represent this 

phenomenon graphically. For example, a thin line means there is information about the 

presence of a levee, an irrigation channel or a shipping route, but not about the 3D-geometry 

(line thickness) nor about whether it meets any preferences (line colour). When this 

information is available, a clear colour means the data is of high quality (an official 

government study or high academic source), a grey dotted pattern shows the result of a 

student report, grey strokes represent an expert guess. With such graphic coding, we can start 

representing any system by browsing existing maps and satellite images, and slowly add 

research data. SimDelta users will be guided in directions with the best data, but can also 

indicate (in the forums) where they would like better data to be added. 

When the same graphic language describes multiple systems, it should cover the smallest 

and the largest elements throughout all systems, and will thus differ from the original Dutch 

model. Furthermore, system boundary rules have to be standardised. For example, the 

approach in all systems is that a ‘solution’ solves a ‘problem’ relative to a ‘reference point’ 


16


caused by a ‘scenario’. In a standardised model, we want to treat a major change in 

operations of a control object on the same level as adding new infrastructure (both 

‘solutions’), even when in some countries new building projects are perceived as much more 

significant than a change in operations. In the interface however, a user can build a storm 

surge barrier to prevent flooding, with similar clicks as he can ‘build’ more frequent gate 

openings for fish migration. In California, local water conservation is a major strategy. 

SimDelta focuses on the national infrastructure. Conservation is represented as a change in 

operations at a fresh water inlet, and not by physical projects, such as water conserving 

toilets. Similar system boundaries are set for the other functions: if a user supports shallower 

ships in Shanghai, he can reduce the maximum shipping channel depths. If he wants floating 

housing to mitigate flood consequences in Bangkok, he can lower the levee design standards 

and express his support for floating housing in the forum. In a universal model, the border 

between maintenance and new projects should also be standardised, but could in policymaking 

reality be seen differently throughout the world. 

4.2. Future Research and Design Strategy 

When the data availability and system boundary recommendations are implemented, it should 

be possible to design a globally-applicable and standardised interactive model for learning, 

organisation and engagement for national water infrastructure development. The next 

questions are who would use it, which water systems to focus on, and how to proceed. 

In the methodology section we distinguished two ways for SimDelta to be used: the 

internal way, where a national government would adopt it, and the external way, where it 

would be developed by an independent entity such as a university. A likely strategy would be 

to start with external adoption and see whether a government would catch on when a critical 

mass of interest and information is reached. In the Netherlands and California, it is possible 

to use freely available government data (officially-approved and therefore the highest quality 

level, but always slightly old), add data and designs by for example universities or conceptual 

engineers (novel ideas, but a quality level more likely to be disputed), and slowly create 

advantages over the existing policy development support models. In Shanghai, however, even 

though the SimDelta ‘internal use’ model seems an opportunity to assist in solving the 

internal communication problems, it would likely meet resistance from Chinese officials. The 

government is reluctant to release data and seems less interested in crowdsourcing, open 

communication and democratization, so a ‘SimShanghai’ will probably not easily gain 

enthusiasm by the Shanghai authorities. 

For an overview of scientific maturity, political feasibility and problem urgency of the 

five studied systems, see table 2. Following from our analysis, California is the preferred 

system to expand towards first. The Netherlands have a primarily flood- and shipping-based 

water system, situated in a delta. California is a semi-desert, with a water system primarily 

for fresh water distribution. If a graphic language would work for both, it will most probably 

work elsewhere. Openness to political debate is an important prerequisite for success of the 

SimDelta concept. After California, the next step could be to work on a system in a 

developing country with a high score on the ‘democratic quality of the political system’, 

where, on a scale of 1-100, the Netherlands score 92, the United States 87, Indonesia 56, 

Thailand 45 and China 26 (Campbell a.o. 2011). 


17


Table 2. Evaluation of criteria for the expansion of the SimDelta interactive model in four candidate 

water systems additional to the Netherlands. We conclude to first expand to California, and then to a 

system in a developing country with a high problem urgency and the highest democratic quality. 

System 

Scientific 

maturity 

Political 

feasibility 

Technological 

maturity 

(E-ranking) 

Problem 

urgency 

Democratic 

quality 

Likely 

implementation 

mechanism 

Rhine-Meuse, 

Netherlands 

Central 

Valley, 

United States 

Citarum 

Basin, 

Indonesia 

Chao Phraya, 

Thailand 

High High High Moderate High External 

High High High Moderate High External 

Low Low Low High Moderate External 

Low Low Moderate High Low External 

Huangpu, 

China 

Moderate Moderate Moderate Moderate Low Internal 

Studying the water systems in developing countries lead to the new ideas of representing 

data quality levels with graphic coding. This provides a perspective on the piecemeal 

development of SimDelta that suits the second ‘external way’ for further development. The 

lowest graphic level are thin grey lines and dots that only show the topography of the system 

(similar to the diagrams in figures 3 and 4). With this basis, the new SimDelta concept will 

allow local agencies with jurisdiction over a specific portion of the system to invest in 

expanding the model to the area that concerns them, without creating an imbalance (some 

parts are more deeply elaborated on than others, but the model is still ‘complete’). SimDelta 

can be filled gradually and expanded endlessly once other organizations perceive the benefits 

of an interactive model that uses the internet to connect modelers and designers with 

stakeholders. 

4.3. Discussion 

This paper was written for the European Journal of Geography but studied water system 

outside Europe. California was selected for its size and arid circumstances, Shanghai and the 

developing countries for their different political systems and scientific maturity levels. If the 

SimDelta framework would be used within Europe, preferred countries would be Germany, 

Belgium and France, to cover the whole Rhine-Meuse system, and not just its delta. Other 

European systems where SimDelta could be of value (meaning sufficient technical 

complexity on a national scale level) could be the Rhine-Danube corridor, perhaps Spain, 

with a climate similar to California, the Danube delta, or other parts of central and eastern 

Europe. We think the water systems of France, England, Italy and Scandinavia have less 

intertwined functions (on the national level), but perhaps we are wrong. 

The analysis in this paper mainly dealt with flooding, fresh water and shipping. It might 

seem that water quality and ecological health were missing. Parts of water quality however 

are either embedded in the fresh water functionality, or do not interact with the other 

functions too much. Ecology interacts a lot with all other functions. In the development of 


18


SimDelta, ecology is kept in sight, but most current endeavour goes towards the functions 

that in policy-making reality seem to have priority: flooding, fresh water and navigation. 

Of course, SimDelta is a concept under development and it is therefore not sure whether it 

will catch on and gain the large audience we hope it will. For a discussion on the pros and 

cons of the idea and the chances for success, we refer to earlier work (Rijcken, T, Stijnen, J, 

en Slootjes, N 2011). 

Finally, the name ‘SimDelta’ will not cover large systems like California, the whole 

Rhine or for example Egypt. When the time comes, a better name will have to be found. 

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21



THE USE OF CARTOONS IN POPULAR PROTESTS THAT FOCUS ON 

GEOGRAPHIC, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ISSUES 

Mary TOTRY 

Oranim Academic College of Education, Tivon Post 36006, Israel 

http://friends.oranim.ac.il/, totrym1@yahoo.com 

Arnon MEDZINI 

Oranim Academic College of Education, Tivon Post 36006, Israel 

http://friends.oranim.ac.il/, arnon@oranim.ac.il 

Abstract 

The comics and related arts (cartoons, graffiti, illustrated posters and signs) have always played 

an important role in shaping public protests. From the French Revolution to the recent Arab 

Spring revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests, these visual means have stood out 

thanks to their ability to transmit their message quickly, clearly and descriptively. Often these 

means have enabled the masses to see their social, economic and political reality in a new and 

critical light. Social, economic and political cartoons are a popular tool of expression in the 

media. Cartoons appear every day in the newspapers, often adjacent to the editorials. In many 

cases cartoons are more successful in demonstrating ideas and information than are complex 

verbal explanations that require a significant investment of time by the writer and the reader as 

well. Cartoons attract attention and curiosity, can be read and understood quickly and are able to 

communicate subversive messages camouflaged as jokes that bring a smile to the reader's face. 

Cartoons become more effective and successful in countries with strict censorship and 

widespread illiteracy, among them many countries in the Arab world. 

Cartoonists are in fact journalists who respond to current events and express their opinions 

clearly and sometimes even scathingly and satirically. They translate political, social and 

economic issues into locally familiar cultural symbols, as well as using symbols that are 

universally recognized. The products of their work complement social protests arising from the 

street. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how cartoons can be used to understand 

geographic, social, economic and political processes by focusing on the cartoons of Naji Al-Ali 

as a case study. 

Keywords: Handala, Naji Al-Ali, Palestinian iconography, Palestinian refugees, Political cartoons, political 

geography 

1. THE PALESTINIAN CARTOONIST NAJI AL-ALI 


22

Totry M.- Medzini A./ European Journal of Geography 4 1 22-35 (2013) 

The Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali was considered one of the most prominent cartoonists in 

the Arab world. A year after his death, the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers 

posthumously awarded him the Golden Pen Award and described him as “one of the best 

cartoonists since the 18 th century” (Mamoun, 2001). 

Cartoon 2 1 Cartoon 3 2 Cartoon 4 3 

Al-Ali’s cartoons influenced millions of people throughout the Arab world. 4 His cartoons 

were not intended to entertain the readers, but rather always conveyed political messages. In 

addition to expressing his personal views, they were sarcastic and daring reflections of the 

feelings of the Palestinian refugees. The loss of Palestine was the main inspiration for his 

cartoons. Therefore, he dedicated most of his cartoons to the suffering of his people, especially 

the poor living in the refugee camps. Some of his work was also dedicated to the oppressed 

people of the Arab world as well as oppressed people worldwide. Although most of his cartoons 

were very pessimistic, some were full of hope, dreams and aspiration for a better life for the 

Arab people in general and the Palestinians in particular. 

Al-Ali addressed taboo issues while avoiding the strict censorship imposed on Arab 

newspapers. His cartoons were simple, clear and easy to understand and were often published 

next to editorials with political messages. The cartoons spoke to and about ordinary people. His 

readers waited eagerly to see his drawing on the last page (which became their front page) of 

many Arab dailies in Lebanon, Kuwait, Tunisia, Abu-Dhabi, Egypt, London and Paris. On the 

other hand, many Arab countries prohibited him from entering and banned his cartoons from 

their local newspapers (Mandell, 1987). 

Al-Ali criticized the injustice done to the Palestinian people by Israel. He scathingly 

criticized the Arab regimes as well as Arafat’s leadership for their submissiveness and corruption 

(Orayb, 2007). His sharp political and social criticism embarrassed many Arab leaders, who 

became his enemies and tried to silence him by censoring his work. During his lifetime he 

received hundreds of death threats and ultimately was assassinated in 1987. 

Naji Al-Ali drew more than 40,000 cartoons, but he was famous mainly for Handala, the 

little Palestinian boy who stands on the sidelines watching the injustices done to his people. 

Handala became Al-Ali’s trademark and a major icon of Palestinian iconography. 

1 http://www.almoltaqa.ps/english/showthread.php?t=10752 

2 http://www.angelfire.com/hi3/ideology/naji.html 

3 http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Naji/naji.html 

4 The New York Times: “If you want to know what the Arabs think of the U.S. look at Naji Al-Ali’s cartoon.” 


23


Cartoon 6 5 

Naji Al-Ali was born in 1937 in the northern Palestinian village Al-Shajara,5F6 situated 

between Nazareth and Tiberius. His family, like 750,000 other Palestinians, was uprooted during 

the Nakba (the catastrophe) in 1948, and his village was destroyed along with another 480 

Palestinian villages. Al-Ali’s family settled in the Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon in 

south Lebanon when he was ten years old. The Nakba and life in the refugee camp had a 

tremendous influence on him and served as the main inspirations for his work. He began drawing 

at school in the refugee camp and received encouragement from his teachers. He witnessed the 

constraints imposed on Palestinians by the Arab countries serving as their hosts. His refugee 

experiences made him swear to immerse himself in politics and serve the Palestinian cause. His 

first drawing, "a hand holding a torch ripping a refugee tent," represents his commitment to the 

Palestinian revolution. 

Cartoon 76F7 

Al-Ali continued his studies at the Union of Christian Churches School in Sidon. Later he 

moved to Tripoli and attended the White Friars' vocational school for two years. He subsequently 

moved to Beirut, where he lived in the Shalita refugee camp and worked at various industrial 

jobs. After qualifying as a car mechanic in 1957, he went to work in Saudi Arabia for two years. 

In 1959 he returned to Lebanon and joined the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) established 

by Dr. George Habash and his university collogues as a protest against the defeat of the Arab 

regimes in 1948. Al-Ali was expelled from the ANM four times within a year for lack of 

discipline. Together with his some ANM comrades he published a handwritten political 

5 https://alsawsanadot.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/%D8%B5%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AD- 

%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AE%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D8%AD%D9%86%D8%B8%D9%84%D8%A9- 

%D8%A5%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%86/ 

6 A mixed village where Christians and Muslims lived together in harmony. 

7 Al-Fakih, H. 2008. Political Development based on Naji Al-Ali’s awareness-raising cartoons. Thesis submitted to 

Nablus University. http://www.najah.edu/thesis/5171614 


24


magazine called Al-Sarkha (the cry), which appeared for two years (1960-1961). He enrolled in 

the Lebanon Academy of Art in 1960, but was unable to continue his studies there as he was 

imprisoned many times for taking part in political activities in the Palestinian camps. He began 

drawing on the walls of the Lebanese jails as a form of political expression. Each time he was 

arrested he made sure to take his ammunition with him — his pencils for drawing cartoons 

(Fayek, 2007). He later moved to Tyre, where he worked as a drawing instructor at the Ja’fariya 

College. 

The turning point in Al-Ali’s life as a political cartoonist came in 1961, when Palestinian 

novelist Ghassan Kanafani 8 discovered his talents. Al-Ali's first drawings were published in the 

Al-Hurriya (liberty) magazine 9 together with an article written by Kanafani. In 1963 Al-Ali 

moved to Kuwait as a result of Lebanese constraints imposed on Palestinian refugees and also 

due to the great demand for professionals in the Gulf States at that time. He also hoped to save 

enough money to continue his studies at one of the famous art academies in Paris. He married in 

1964 and continued living in Kuwait, where he worked for the Arab nationalist weekly magazine 

Al-Tali’ah (the forefront). In 1968 he moved to the Al-Siyasa (politics) newspaper, even though 

he did not approve of its political orientation. Feeling that freedom of speech was being limited 

at the newspaper, in 1969 he introduced Handala to his readers for the first time. During his time 

in Kuwait he made several visits to Lebanon. 

In 1974 Al-Ali moved back to Lebanon and began working at the Lebanese newspaper Al- 

Safir (the ambassador). He was shocked by the major trends sweeping the Palestinian refugee 

camps at that time. He claimed that prior to 1973 the refugee camps had been united and had 

clear goals, but due to the oil money brought by the PLO into the camps they had become 

chaotic armed jungles. He accused the Arab regimes as well the PLO leadership of corrupting the 

young generation of Palestinians. 

Cartoon 8 10 Cartoon 9 11 

Al-Ali witnessed and scathingly criticized the battles within the Palestinian refugee camps, 

the split in the Arab world after the 1973 war and the civil war in Lebanon that broke out in 

1975. He called for unity among Christians and Muslims and for improving the status of women 

in the Arab world. He criticized corruption, lack of democracy and the widening social and 

economic gaps in the Arab countries. 

8 He was assassinated in 1971 by the Israeli Mossad. 

9 Al-Hurriya under Kanafani's editorship was considered the voice of the Arab Nationalist Movement. Al-Ali’s first 

drawing appeared in No. 88 in September 1961. 

10 http://www.angelfire.com/hi3/ideology/naji.html 

11 http://www.handala.org/cartoons/cartoon-gallery/oil/2.html 


25



During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Al-Ali was detained for a short time by the 

Israeli army. That traumatic war made him once again move to Kuwait in 1983, where he 

worked at the Al-Qabas newspaper. He was frequently detained by the Kuwaiti police, and in 

1985 a decision was made to expel him for good. He decided to settle in London and work for 

the international edition of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas. Two years later he was shot in the 

head outside the London offices of Al-Qabas. He was 49 years old when he was killed. 14 The 

assassin’s identity remains unknown. Two weeks before his assassination he received threats 

from prominent Fatah 15 leaders, who warned him not to go too far with his political criticism of 

Arafat. In one of his cartoons he depicted Arafat as a dictator willing to make humiliating 

compromises. 


During his lifetime Al-Ali published three books of cartoons, in 1976, 1983 and 1985, and was 

preparing another book when he was killed. In 1979 he was elected president of the League of 

Arab Cartoonists, and was awarded prizes at Arab cartoonist exhibitions held in Damascus in 

1979 and 1980. 

2. AL-ALI’S CARTOONS 

Al-Ali avoided long political speeches about the situation in the Middle East. Most of his work 

dealt with the plight of the Palestinian people and with criticism of Israel and the Israeli 

12 http://breadsandcircuses.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/naji-al-ali/ 

13 Right to left - Yesterday, today, tomorrow: Women’s right are shifted by conservative Arab Elite (January 1985). 

Sacco (2009). A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali, British Library Cataloguing in Publication London. 

14 He was shot on July 22nd and died on August 30th 1987 at Charging Cross Hospital in London. At the time of his 

death he was married and the father of five children. 

15 Fatah is the main faction in the PLO, headed by Yasser Arafat. 

16 http://electronicintifada.net/content/naji-al-ali-timeless-conscience-palestine/5166 

17 http://vb.we3rb.com/showthread.php?t=2139 


26


occupation responsible for the Palestinian catastrophe. But he also criticized the hypocrisy of 

some of the PLO leaders, who used the willingness of young fighters to sacrifice their lives for 

their own aggrandizement. He criticized the lack of democracy in the Arab world and the 

silencing of the opposition. He drew many cartoons under the title “No to Silencing.” In some of 

his cartoons he expressed his solidarity with the Vietnamese people as well as with the Iranian 

people under the Shah's regime. 


Al-Ali also criticized the corruption of the Arab regimes and their alliance with the two super 

powers against the interests of their own people. He attacked the USA for its support of Israel 

and its arms policy. He also criticized the Soviet Union (though not as severely as he criticized 

the USA) for using some of the Arab countries to promote its own interests. He blamed the Arab 

governments for their failure to solve the Palestinian cause. He also blamed the Gulf States for 

their submissiveness to the West and their responsibility for widening the gaps between the 

classes. He defined himself as a realist aligned with the poor. 

Many of his cartoons expressed his position towards solving the Palestinian cause. Al-Ali 

opposed any settlement that would not vindicate the Palestinian people’s right to all of historical 

Palestine. He rejected the willingness shown by certain factions in the PLO after the October 

1973 war to settle for only part of historical Palestine. 

Other Palestinian intellectuals, among them Professor Hisham Sharabi and Edward Said, also 

criticized the way the PLO leadership dealt with free speech. They believed that the silencing of 

free speech allowed terrorism to determine how differences were settled among the 

Palestinians. 20 

3. AL-ALI’S MAIN CHARACTERS 

Unlike many cartoonists, Al-Ali rarely drew specific politicians or satirized actual people in his 

cartoons. 21 Instead, he created several characters that appeared in most of his drawings 

throughout his thirty-year career. He also used many symbols that served as a broad visual 

vocabulary, used even after his death. These symbols were divided into three categories: symbols 

of positive values, 22 symbols of the Palestinian struggle 23 and symbols of the Israeli occupation 

18 http://www.elaphblog.com/posts.aspx?u=1603&A=22521 

19 http://www.handala.org/cartoons/cartoon-gallery/arab-regimes/index.html 

20 An interview conducted with Prof. Hisham Sharabi in Middle East International on 10 October 1987. 

21 Only in a few of his works did he draw Arafat, Kissinger and Begin. 

22 The positive values included hope, love, respect, democracy, human rights, education, freedom of speech and 

strong ties to the land. He used flowers, birds, hearts, trees and roots to express these values. 

23 The key wrapped around Fatima’s neck (the main female character in Al-Ali’s cartoons) symbolizing the right of 

return; the Palestinian flag; the Palestinian keffiyeh; the passport representing the loss of political sovereignty; the 


27


and oppression. 24 In many of his drawings he used scenes with Christian symbols, such as the 

Crucifixion, to represent Palestinian suffering. 


Al-Ali’s cartoons included four main characters: Handala, Falima, Al-Zalama and the Evil 

Man. 

Cartoon 18 27 

Fatima represents the good Palestinian woman. Al-Ali drew Fatima using simple and sharp 

lines. Fatima is the dedicated mother and wife who worries and takes an active part in the 

struggle for freedom. She makes sure her man does not digress from the path of resistance. She 

symbolizes Palestine, Lebanon, the refugee camps and the struggle for independence. She 

usually wears a dress with traditional Palestinian embroidery and has a house key around her 

neck, and she is strongly rooted to the land (Fayek, 2007). She is willing to give birth to more 

freedom fighters to strengthen the resistance movement. Pregnant Fatima represents the Intifada. 

In some of the cartoons she resembles Mary, mother of Jesus. 

map of Mandatory Palestine; the cactus plant symbolizing the Palestinian villages destroyed during the Nakba; the 

tents symbolizing the Palestinian refugee camps; and children throwing stones at the Israeli tanks, representing the 

resistance of ordinary Palestinians which became the main weapon of the First Intifada. 

24 He used American and Israeli soldiers wearing helmets, tiles and blocks symbolizing the settlements, prisons and 

jails and borders blocking the Palestinians from returning to their homeland. 

25 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6911815.stm 

26 http://redsocial.uimp20.es/profiles/blogs/naji-al-ali-refugiado 

27 http://www.oweis.com/Handala.pdf 


28



Al-Zalama (man) is the second main character in Al-Ali’s cartoons. He is a thin, miserablelooking 

man, also drawn using simple and sharp lines. He represents the Palestinian as victim of 

Israeli oppression and other hostile forces. He also represents the poor, the oppressed, the 

refugees and the abused citizens of the Arab world. He is usually dressed in ragged clothes. He 

represents positive values and fights for democracy. One of the cartoons depicts him drawing up 

his will after having written an article about democracy. 


The Evil Man is the opposite of the two previous characters. He represents ugliness and all 

the negative values in the Arab world. He is usually depicted as fat, well-dressed and smoking a 

cigar (Fayek, 2007). Al-Ali drew him without a neck or feet and with a stupid look on his face. 

The Evil Man represents the Arab regimes that oppress their people and hinder progress and 

democracy. These regimes are busy plotting against the resistance movement and collaborating 

with Israel and the West. The Evil Man also represents Palestinian political leaders who live a 

comfortable life. Al-Ali criticized these leaders for the compromises they made at the expense of 

Palestinian refugees and freedom fighters. 

28 http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.co.il/2009/07/child-in-palestine-cartoons-of-naji-al.html 

29 http://breadsandcircuses.wordpress.com/category/naji-al-ali/ 

30 http://empowered-a.blogspot.co.il/ 

31 http://majdah.maktoob.com/vb/majdah68554/ 

32 http://sha3teely.com/?m=200705 

33 Your article on democracy was very impressive .. What are you writing for tomorrow? - I'm writing my will. 

http://www.angelfire.com/hi3/ideology/naji.html 


29


Cartoon 25 34 Cartoon 26 35 Cartoon 27 36 Cartoon 28 37 

Handala is the 10-year-old barefoot Palestinian boy who appeared in Al-Ali’s cartoons since 

1969 and became an icon of Palestinian identity and defiance. He is a mute witness who stands 

on the sidelines and experiences the misery and the humiliation of the Palestinian people (Orayb, 

2007). Al-Ali used to sign his name on his cartoons, but after he introduced Handala 38 to his 

readers, the boy became Al-Ali’s signature. Handala symbolized Al-Ali’s lost childhood 39 as 

well as his allegiance to the poor in general and to the Palestinian refugees in particular. 

The word Handala refers to a medicinal bitter desert fruit that can endure hardships. Al-Ali 

depicted Handala as an ugly boy with spiked hair that can be used as a weapon. The artist stated 

that Handala is not beautiful, pampered or well fed, but despite his looks he is affectionate, 

honest and outspoken. He is always barefoot and wears ragged clothes, like many of the children 

in the refugee camps. Al-Ali said that Handala became an icon that watched over him and 

prevented him from slipping or forgetting his commitment to the Palestinian cause. Handala, Al- 

Ali said, was committed to the people who cherish him (Orayb, 2007). 

Cartoon 29 40 

After 1973, Al-Ali began depicting Handala with his back to the viewer and his hands 

clasped behind his back to indicate Al-Ali’s rejection of the outside solutions offered by the US 

34 http://www.oweis.com/Handala.pdf 

35 http://www.handala.org/cartoons/cartoon-gallery/arab-regimes/index.html 

36 http://www.ikbis.com/shots/105993 

37 http://albared.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/%D9%8A%D8%B0%D9%83%D8%B1-%D8%A3%D9%86- 

%D8%AC%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%AC%D9%86- 

%D9%83%D8%A7%D9%86-%D9%84%D9%88%D8%AD%D8%A9- 

%D9%84%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%AC%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%8A/ 

38 When he working at Al-Siyasa (‘politics’) newspaper in Kuwait. 

39 Al-Ali was ten when he was exiled during the Palestinian Nakba. Therefore, Handala will remain ten years old 

until he returns to Palestine. Al-Ali said many times that the rules of nature do not apply to Handala. 

40 http://www.almoltaqa.ps/english/showthread.php?t=10752 


30


and the Arab regimes after the October 1973 war. 41 After the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 

1982, Al-Ali's Handala figure lost its sense of serenity. The character became active and militant 

and was depicted throwing stones at the Israeli flag, writing graffiti on walls, and brandishing a 

rifle, a sword and the Palestinian flag. 

Al-Ali used Handala to show that the Palestinian problem was not yet solved, stating that 

Handala would reveal his face to the readers again only when the Palestinian refugees return to 

their homeland and Arab pride is regained. Handala began as a Palestinian boy and became an 

icon of the Palestinian struggle. 

Cartoon 30 42 Cartoon 31 43 Cartoon 32 44 Cartoon 33 45 

Handala is depicted in three different situations. In some of the scenes he appears as an 

outsider watching passively what is happening around him (45%), in others he plays an active 

role in what is happening (30%), and in still others (20%) he is an observer with a defined role 

(Al-Asadi & Tadmouri, 1984). 


Over half of Al-Ali’s cartoons were not accompanied by any text, as the message was usually 

clear and understood. Some cartoons had short texts, and others were primarily text (Orayb, 

2007). 

41 He reflects the passiveness and helplessness of the Palestinian refugees and their rejection of the offers made by 

Kissinger, the American Middle East advisor. 

42 http://alweehdat2.blogspot.co.il/2012/04/blog-post.html 

43 http://oweis.com/handala.html 

44 http://msuliman.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/observing-the-arabuprisings/577477_305868536168464_1720693386_n/ 

45 http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.co.il/2009/07/child-in-palestine-cartoons-of-naji-al.html 

46 http://www.arab4ever.com/montada/showthread.php?threadid=12753 

47 paper: autonomy. http://www.angelfire.com/hi3/ideology/naji.html 

48 http://vb.we3rb.com/showthread.php?t=2139 


31

http://www.almoltaqa.ps/english/showthread.php?t=10752 

56 

55 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Handala-edit.png 

http://occident.blogspot.co.il/2010/09/in-pictures-palestine-home-of.html 

54 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2009_Iranian_election_protests 



Al-Ali was not afraid to express his views even after receiving hundreds of threats. Through 

Handala he dedicated his cartoons to freedom of speech, human rights and democracy. 

Al-Ali was killed four months before the outbreak of the first Intifada, which he had 

predicted. He also predicted his own assassination. Handala, however, survived the assassination 

and continues to live until today. Al-Ali said, “Handala, who I created, will not end after my 

end. I hope that this not an exaggeration when I say I will continue to live with Handala, even 

after I die” (Allessandra, 1998). 

Al-Ali’s legacy continues to flourish. Handala appeared on the poster of the “the 

conscious” 52 list in the 2006 Palestinian elections. He has been used as an icon by many 

Palestinian student organizations worldwide. The Iranian green movement established after the 

2009 Iranian presidential election adopted Handala as its icon, depicted with a green scarf 

around his neck and a green band on his left hand, raised in the victory sign. 53 

Cartoon 40 54 Cartoon 41 55 Picture 42 56 

49 http://www.handala.org/cartoons/cartoon-gallery/oil/2.html 

50 http://www.alwarsha.com/articles/%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%AC%D9%8A- 

%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%8A 

51 http://arab-unity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2275 

52 The Popular Front of Palestine’s list of Abu-Ali Mustafa. 

53 Timeline of the 2009 Iranian election protests: 


32


Handala’s figure can be seen at festivals and parades alongside other Palestinian 

iconographic symbols, 57 such as the map of villages destroyed during the Nakba. Handala has 

also been adopted as the formal icon of UNESCO’s freedom organization. A 1992 film about Al- 

Ali’s life was greatly admired throughout the Arab world (Arjan, 2004). In 2007 a documentary 

film called The Icon was made about his life, and in 2008 he was a dominant figure at the 60 th 

commemoration of Al-Nakba. Many exhibitions of his work have been shown around the world 

under the title “Shooting the Witness.” 

Today Handala figures can be seen throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, drawn on the 

Separation Wall built by Israel as well as on the walls of houses. Dozens of Internet sites teach 

the legacy of Al-Ali, and many Facebook pages provide instructions on how to draw Handala. 

Young people wear necklaces with the Handala figure or make Handala tattoos on their bodies 

as an icon of defiance. Handala figures also ornament many objects in souvenir shops and 

appear in campaigns boycotting Israeli products. 

4. SUMMARY 

Figure 43 58 Figure 44 59 Figure 45 60 

Political cartoons can have a greater impact than written articles. In countries with a high rate of 

illiteracy and strict censorship, cartoons are an effective alternative to prohibited words. Al-Ali 

wisely circumvented the strict censorship imposed on the newspapers of the Arab world and 

dealt with issues that were taboo at the time without embellishing reality. His simple and clear 

cartoons were placed adjacent to editorials conveying political messages. The symbols and the 

characters he used have become a rich visual vocabulary that is still used after his death. His 

cartoons challenged readers to take stands and express their positions on events taking place in 

the Middle East. 

Al-Ali used his four main characters to express his views of complicated and contradictory 

matters. He used his Handala icon in diverse situations: sometimes as a passive observer 

clasping his hands behind his back and sometimes as a player active in the scene. He used many 

powerful Palestinian symbols, such as the house key to symbolize the right of return, the map of 

Palestine drawn on a keffiyeh and the passport symbolizing the refugees’ imprisonment and 

57 Palestinian iconography includes the rifle, the fist symbolizing the struggle, the V for victory sign, the Palestinian 

flag, the key symbolizing the right of return, the map of Mandatory Palestine and the black and white keffiyeh (head 

scarf). 

58 http://www.alrassedonline.com/2010_12_12_archive.html 

59 http://www.flickr.com/photos/dastenras/galleries/72157625264970575 

60 http://www.flickr.com/photos/48567883@N03/5242116289/ 


33


inability to obtain any citizenship. His cartoons expressed the feelings and aspirations of the 

Palestinian refugees. 

Handala was brave and faithful to his own beliefs. He was dedicated to freedom of speech 

and human rights, thus becoming an icon of oppressed and poor people worldwide. He preached 

freedom of speech, improved status for women and Arab unity. He criticized the Israeli 

occupation, dictatorship in the Arab world and the hypocrisy of the Arab and Palestinian 

leadership. 

As Al-Ali predicted, Handala's role did not end with the death of his creator. Even today 

Handala remains a unifying national icon for all Palestinians. He has become an international 

icon that represents freedom of speech and the suffering of children. Handala’s image is still 

used by human right organizations as well as at demonstrations, with dozens of Internet sites and 

Facebook pages teaching his legacy. 

REFERENCES 

Al-Arian, L. 2005. Naji al-Ali's Cartoons Still Relevant Today. Washington Report on Middle 

East Affairs: 24 (1): 67-68. 

Al-Asadi, A. - Tadmouri, H. 1984. A Research on Naji Al-Ali’s work. Beirut: The House of 

Treasures. (Arabic) 

Al-Fakih, H. 2008. The Political Development based on Naji Al-Ali’s cartoons that raises 

awareness. Thesis submitted in Nablus University. 

Fayeq, O. 2007. Handala and the Cartoons of Naji al-Ali: Relevance, Characters, Symbols, The 

Jerusalem Fund Gallery, Washington/ 

Mandell, J. 1987. Naji al-'Ali Remembered, MERIP Middle East Report: No. 149, Human Rights 

in the Middle East : 26-27. 

Sacco, J. (ed.) 2009. A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali, British Library 

Cataloguing in Publication Data, Verso, London. 

Shadad, N. 2008. The journey of Naji al-Ali and his Handala character. Yemen Times, 1/9/2008. 

Sanaa. 

Orayb, A. N. 2007. Cartoons as a Site for the Construction of Palestinian Refugee Identity: An 

Exploratory Study of Cartoonist Naji al-Ali . Journal of Communication Inquiry:31 (3): 255- 

285. 

WEB REFERENCES 

Alessandra Antonelli, Remembering the "conscience" of Palestine, "Palestine Report", vol. 5, 

No. 12, 4 September 1998, http://palestineaidsociety.org/www/najiali.htm 

Arjan El Fassed, Naji al-Ali: The timeless conscience of Palestine, "The Electronic Intifada", 22 

July 2004, http://www.najialali.com/articles_06.html 

Arjan El Fassed, Naji al-Ali: The timeless conscience of Palestine, The Electronic Intifada, 22 

July 2004 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2929.shtml 

Al-Salam Alikom, The Life and Death of Naji Al-Ali, http://www.najialali.com/articles_02.html 


34


Ghassan Joha, Naji Al Ali: Martyrdom for a patriotic artist, JORDAN STAR, 24 September 

1998 http://palestineaidsociety.org/www/najiali.htm 

Ha'aretz, 15 June 1999, An Ongoing Crisis of Confidence: The British spy agency is refraining 

from warning Israel of planned attacks. http://palestineaidsociety.org/www/najiali.htm 

Handala.org, Through the eyes of Palestinian refugee, http://handala.org 

Fayeq Oweis, Handala and the Cartoons of Naji al-Ali Political Cartoons in the Middle East, 

http://knol.google.com/k/handala-and-the-cartoons-of-naji-al-ali?version=4# 

Lubna Khader, Naji Al Ali: Immortal Palestinian cartoonist, 

http://www.najialali.com/articles_03.html 

Mamoun Asfour, 10, 9, 2001, Naji Al Ali remembered, 

http://www.najialali.com/articles_04.html 

Michel Faber, (2009), Pens and swords, praises the work of a visionary Palestinian cartoonist, 

"The Guardian", 11 July 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/11/childpalestine-cartoons-al-ali 

Nagi El-Ali, (1998), I am from Ain Al-Helwa, Special pages commemorating 50 years of Arab 

dispossession since the creation of the State of Israel, "AL-AHRAM", Cairo. 

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/1948/361_nagi.htm 

Naji Al-Ali, My signature, Hanthala: The Symbol of the Child, http://palestineaidsociety.org 

Naji Al-Ali: Immortal Palestinian Cartoonist. http://www.najialali.com/articles.html 

Naji Al-Ali Exhibit ‘Shooting the Witness’ exhibition by Naji Al- 

Ali.http://www.nakba60.org.uk/gallery/index.html 

Wittyworld, International Cartoon Center (1987), Veteran Palestinian political cartoonist 

assassinated in exile 

http://www.wittyworld.com/countries/england.html 


35

European Journal of Geography Volume 4, Issue 1: 36-47, 2013 


EUROPE IN MIND: SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF TURKEY-EUROPE 

RELATIONS IN CASE OF TURKISH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS 

Ilkay SUDAS 

Ege University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Geography, 35100 Izmir, Turkey 

ilkaysudas@gmail.com, http://www.ege.edu.tr/index.php?lid=2&SayfaID=641&cat=details 

Melek GOREGENLI 

Ege University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Psychology, 35100 İzmir, Turkey 

melekgor@gmail.com, http://www.ege.edu.tr/index.php?lid=2&SayfaID=641&cat=details 

Abstract 

In this article, social representations of Europe are studied in case of Turkish university 

students. The sample consists of 382 students from various departments of Faculty of Letters 

at Ege University. The students were asked to write a short text on what they think on 

Europe-Turkey relations and to order the first five things that the word “Europe” reminds 

them of. Additionally, participants fulfilled a questionnaire containing several sociodemographic 

questions and specified whether they have been to Europe or not. The texts 

written by students were subjected to content analysis, connotations were classified and the 

results were compared as to departments. The results indicate that Turkey’s relations with 

Europe for university students are independent from the historical development that it 

followed in the western context and objectivity of Turkey-EU relations and social 

representations of Europe have developed on ideological background more than geographical 

basis. 

Keywords: Turkey-Europe relationship, Europe as a cultural region, social representation 


Spatial or geographical “imaginaries” are representations of place and space that play a role 

in structuring people’s understanding of the world and which, in complex ways, influence 

people’s actions. As an extensive literature in cultural geography has demonstrated, these 

representations or constructions of the world are also closely intertwined with the material 

world and play a role in the ordering and bordering of space and the construction of 

normative visions of how space “should be” (Sellar et. al. 2009:253). As a cultural, 

institutional and geographical entity Europe has multidimensional representations and can be 

imagined and defined is various means. However Europe would be defined as a continent, it 

can be seen as a human entity and represents “a cultural area” with its overall way of life in 

common, including ideology, technology, social institutions and material possessions 

(Murphy et al. 2009). Many definitions and perspectives have been developed on “Europe”; 

Lee (1985), for example, suggests a distinction between different geographical perspectives 


36

Sudas I.- Goregenli M../ European Journal of Geography 4 1 36-47 (2013) 

of Europe that have both expressed and modified the understanding of what Europe is. 

Europe may be understood as a structural body, an experience or an institution (Paasi 2001). 

When considered as a geographical region with its human and physical characteristics, 

Europe can be seen as a physical structure which ignores the geopolitical realities of the 

states. On the other hand, the dominant image of Europe is mostly based on the European 

Union, which is the institutional Europe and which is defined through institutional structures 

that are constitutive of European economic and cultural integration. As a political 

construction, European Union can be accepted as “the emergence of the first truly 

postmodern international political form” (Ruggie (1993:140) however Mazower (1998) 

argues that the “Europe” of the EU is not a reality; it is rather a promise or delusion. The 

established geography and existing spatial scales of the institutional Europe are increasingly 

challenged when new candidates are knocking at the gate (Paasi 2001). 

As a candidate country for the EU since 1999, Turkey has deep relations with Europe and 

it has a long history of Europeanization. Europe, both as a region and an element of social 

representation, has been one of the most significant actors in the modernization of Turkey. 

Understanding the dynamics of the discussions that are carried out in Turkey in the process of 

EU membership and analyzing the perspectives from different groups of Turkish society on 

this process is important not only in the aspect of social sciences but also in order to factually 

examine the relation of Turkey with the West and Europe. Because Europe has been one of 

the milestones in the modernization process of Turkey; analyzing social representations on 

Europe can provide a detailed framework on both the EU membership process of Turkey and 

the different modernization views of Turkish society. 

World history, in modern terms, is the grand narrative of understanding civilisation on the 

basis of the western notions of nation-state/capitalism/rationality. History of the modern 

world, as Said (1978; 1993) insistently emphasises, is the attempt to construct the discourse 

of opposition between the western modernity and the non-western. This grand narrative is a 

cultural construct which represents the understanding of the ‘other’ that should be controlled 

and constructed as the ‘cultural object’ which needs to be transformed into the modern. Said 

(1978) calls this discursive formulation of the ‘other’ as Orientalism. In this sense, 

Orientalism can be considered as a discourse that constructs and represents the ‘other’ or the 

‘different’ as a non-western object/subject. Orientalism in the Turkish context manifests itself 

as the identification of the west with the Enlightenment. Just from the beginning of the 

modernisation process, even in the Ottoman Era, the West that the Ottoman intellectuals 

intended to attain was the Enlightenment ideals. Enlightenment is, indeed, a cosmopolitan 

tradition beyond the traditions of the national idea (Yavuz, 1998). Namely, Enlightenment as 

a notion does not refer to a ‘national tradition’. Hence the identification of Europeanization 

with the Enlightenment was unavoidable for the Ottoman intellectuals. For them, to become 

westernised also meant to be the advocate of Enlightenment ideals. The intellectuals of the 

Republican Era, in this sense, are much the same with those of the Ottoman Era. The 

westernization project transposed from the 1890’s to the Republican Era by the Turkish 

intellectuals has been undoubtedly an Enlightenment project. In other words, westernization 

and Europeanization became synonymous with the materialisation of Enlightenment ideals in 

daily life. 

In this context of discussion, Turkish modernity is taken to mean the process of 

embracing and internalizing all the social and cultural dimensions that made Europe/the West 

‘modern’ in an effort to participate in the west. As a result, the history of Turkish 

modernisation becomes a continuous effort to imitate, to Westernise/Europeanize, and to reposition 

the Turkish society in relation to presumed western superiority. It is important to 

present how Europeanization is understood in Turkish society hence today Europeanization 

has different meanings as Clark and Jones (2008:301) categorizes basing on various works: 


37


For some, its significance lies in its diffusing state-based power and competencies, 

facilitating the transition from government to governance. From this perspective, state 

sovereignty is challenged by the emergent EU polity. For others, Europeanization has 

opposite effects, strengthening state-based orders and buttressing national government. 

Between these two positions, Europeanization can be accepted as much a response to global 

social transformation as it is of change in European institutions and governance. How is the 

Westernization-Europeanization process of Turkey socially represented in the minds of 

Turkish young population today? In this study, Europe, both as a geographical region and an 

element of social representations and the perception of Europe-Turkey relations are 

investigated in case of university students. 

2. SOCIAL REPRESENTATION THEORY 

One of the most important recent developments in European social psychology has been the 

emergence of the concept of “social representation”. For many years Serge Moscovici has 

been one of the leading critics of orthodoxies in social psychological thinking. Moscovici 

(1984) stresses the social creation of mental states and he has investigated how intellectual 

ideas become incorporated into common-sense thinking (Billig, 1991:57). The term “social 

representation” refers to the manner in which values, ideas, and practices are structured in 

and by ordinary communication, allowing people both to communicate and to order their 

world (Manstead and Hewstone, 1999). Daily discourse is to be understood in the broadest 

possible manner, ranging from immediate conversation to mediated conversation (i.e. mass 

media). The particular focus of social representations is on the content of such discourses 

and, more precisely, what happens to this content in the process of daily discourse: 

representation is regarded as a special category of knowledge and beliefs. It is essentially the 

knowledge that is to be found in ordinary communication. Furthermore, the structure of this 

knowledge is assumed to correspond to that found in ordinary communication. Moscovici 

(1984) defines social representations as “systems of values, ideas, and practices with a twofold 

function: first to establish an order which will enable individuals to orient themselves in 

and master their material world, and second, to facilitate communication among members of 

a community by providing them with a code for naming and classifying the various aspect of 

their world and their individual and group history”. Thus, social representations provide a 

position or perspective from which an individual or a group can observe and interpret events 

and situations. As reference points, social representations enable orientation by furnishing 

specific interpretative views of the social and the physical world. 

The theory of social representations postulates a process of the familiarisation of the 

unfamiliar, or how the “unknown” from the “outside” becomes transferred into the “inside”, 

that is, that the purpose of all representations is to make something unfamiliar, or 

unfamiliarity itself, familiar (Moscovici, 1984). Two processes are assumed to be centrally 

involved in the familiarising the unfamiliar or the conversion of new knowledge into the 

habitual. The first mechanism strives to anchor strange ideas, to reduce them to ordinary 

categories and images, to set them in a familiar context. The anchoring process refers to the 

integration of new knowledge into categories, images and symbols that are already known 

and shared and that present readily identifiable reference point. To anchor is thus to classify 

and to name something. Things that are unclassified and unnamed are alien, non-existent and 

at the same time threatening. By classifying what is unclassifiable, naming what is 

unnameable, we are able to imagine it, to represent it. Indeed, social representation is, 

basically, a system of classification and denotation, of allotting categories and names 

(Moscovici, 1984). To categorize someone or something amounts to choosing a paradigm 

from those stored in our memory and established a positive or a negative relation with it. In 


38


short, classifying and naming are two aspects of the anchoring of social representations 

(Moscovici 1984). 

The second general process that is postulated by Moscovici (1984) is objectification. Like 

anchoring, objectification is presumed to turn the unfamiliar into the familiar. By the process 

of objectification the “invisible” becomes “perceptible” (Farr, 1984:386). This refers to how 

the unusual becomes a part of general discourse, not so much as an object of discourse, but as 

an integral element in discourses that shared by members of the different groups. 

Therefore, the purpose of this study is therefore to explain how and why social 

representations are produced and examine to what extend “Europe” is accepted as a physical 

geographical entity and which aspects of Europe other than physical ones, come to forefront 

in the representations of a Turkish sample which is expected to be objective in relation to 

their relatively high educational level. 

3. METHOD: THE SAMPLE, INSTRUMENTS AND ANALYSIS 

In this article, “social representations of Europe” is studied in case of Turkish university 

students. The students were asked to order the first five things that the word “Europe” 

reminds them of and write a short text on what they think on Europe-Turkey relations. 

Additionally, participants fulfilled a questionnaire containing several socio-demographic 

questions and the department that they study. Participants specified whether they have been 

to Europe. 

The sample consists of 382 students from various departments of Faculty of Letters at 

Ege University: Department of Geography (19,1%), Department of Psychology (21,7), 

Department of History (26,2%) and departments of Western Literatures (English and 

German, 33,0%). The sample consists of 236 female (61,8%) and 143 male (37,4%) 

participants. 3 participants did not specify the gender (0,8%). The mean age of the sample is 

21,42. 

The open-ended questions were analyzed using the thematic content analysis method in 

order to describe the attributes of participants about Europe and Turkey-Europe relations. The 

answers of participants for open-ended questions were reviewed and recoded by two 

researchers to capture the subtlety of concepts and contextual meanings. Categories were 

created and emerging themes were identified. 

3.1. Findings 

Findings of the research will be presented in two parts. Firstly, the connotations of Europe 

will be presented as the categories of social representations. Secondly, the results of the 

thematic content analysis of texts written by the participants about Turkey-Europe relations 

will be given. 

3.1.1. Social representations of Europe. 

Connotations from participants were classified and summarized in Table 1. 

Twelve main connotation groups were distinguished in the total answers of participants. 

The thematic units indicated that participants expressed the positive political-institutional 

connotations (PPIC) as involving the most prevailing connotations of Europe, with a share of 

40.2%. Most of the participants indicated connotations such as developed countries, 

development, employment opportunities, rules, social state or welfare which refer to the 

political structure of Europe in a positive manner. 16.0% of the connotations are the negative 

political-institutional connotations (NPIC) including words such as colonialism, conflicts, 

imperialists or oppressive superiority. Being the third thematic unit, geographical 

connotations (10.1%) includes mostly the city and country names which refer to the 


39


topographical knowledge and, in less numbers, other physical geographical features such as a 

continent, a volcano or a region. 


Table 1. Social representations of Europe 

FR. % EXAMPLES OF CONNOTATIONS 

Capitalism, civilization, co-operation, criteria, developed countries, developed 

economy, development, discipline, diplomacy, economic opportunities, 

economic sources, educational facilities, employment opportunities, Erasmus 

program, Euro, European Union, flag of EU, free market economy, free 

movement, globalism, Helsinki Summit, high environmental responsibility, high 

Positive Politicalinstitutional 

735 40,2 

standard of life, importation, independence, industrial society, innovations, 

international power, knowledge, liberalism, machines, medical facilities, modern 

connotations 

life, modernism, money, opportunities, organization, policies, production, 

quality, regular traffic, regularity, rules, science, security, social state, 

standards, state of law, strategies, technology, terminology of progress, 

transportation, union, United Nations, unity, well urban planning, welfare, 

westernization 

Barbarism, colonialism, conflicts, crime, double standard, enemy of the East, 

Negative Political - 

institutional 

connotations 

293 16,0 

enemy of the Turks, false democracy, fascism, governing the world, Israel- 

Palestinian war, imperialists, imposing, irreligiousness, lonely people, Nazis, 

oppressive superiority, patronizing, racism, religion selective human rights, 

requiring, savagery, social decadence, terror supporters, injustice, violence, war 

Amsterdam, Atlantic, Balkans, Barcelona, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brussels, 

continent of Europe, Cyprus, Czech Republic, England, Etna volcano, Finland, 

Geographical 

186 10,1 France, geography course, Germany, Greece, half of Istanbul, Italy, Izmir, 

attributions 

London, maps, Norway, Paris, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Spain, 

Stuttgart, sun, Switzerland, the Netherlands, western part of Turkey 

Adventure, beautiful women, beer, comfort, disappointment, dreams, fashion, 

Individualistic 

166 9,0 friends, fun, gardening, leisure, life style, love, my relatives, my future, night 

attributions 

life, peace, pleasure, romance, sexuality, shopping, wine 

Attributions related 

Copenhagen criteria, Democracy, equality, European Court of Human Rights, 

to 

freedom of religion belief, freedom of thought and expression justice, French 

130 7,1 

democracy&human 

Revolution, gender equality, human rights, personal freedom, right to legal 

rights 

remedies 

Acting on the sly, ambition, arrogance, conspiration, discrimination, egoism, 

Negative personal 

106 5,8 greed, grimness, immorality, insincerity, liar, “othering”, pragmatism, 

characteristics 

prejudice, selfishness, slanderer, unhappiness, venomous 


A unity based on religion, Bible and sword, Cathedrals, Christianity, Churches, 

55 3,0 

to religion 

non-Muslim people, Pope, the Crusaders 

Arenas, city squares, chateaus, Disneyland, Eiffel Tower, gondolas, historical 

Tourism attributions 43 2,4 sites, holiday, natural attractions, Pisa Tower, “places i would like to see”, 

places to visit, the sentence “when I was in Europe...”, travel, tourism 


Arts, books, Cannes Film Festival, classical music, culture, films, languages, 

43 2,4 

to “high culture” 

literature, music, piano, Shakespeare, theatre 

Demographic 

Blonde people, family planning, human diversity, immigrant, immigration, 

31 1,7 

attributions 

minorities, the elderly, Turkish immigrants in Europe 

Ancient Greece, Ancient Civilizations, geographical discoveries, grandsons of 

Historical 

27 1,4 Byzantium, Kings and Queens, Medieval Ages, Ottoman Empire, Renascence, 

attributions 

Reform and Enlightens, Second World War, Siege of Vienna 

Positive personal 

characteristics 

13 0,7 

Decency, diligence, cleverness, enlightened people, good manners, honesty, 

open minded people, personal qualifications, respect, smart people, success 

Other important thematic units can be counted as the individualistic attributions (9.0%), 

attributions related to democracy and human rights (7.1%) and those related to negative 

personal characteristics (5.8%). On the other hand, religious attributions (3.0%), tourism 

attributions (2.4%), “high”cultural attributions (2.4%), demographic attributions (1.7%), 

historical attributions (1.4%) and the attributions related to positive personal characteristics 

(0.7%) have relatively low shares. 

PPIC present a balanced distribution among the departments as shown in Graphic 1. 

There is not much difference observed between departments in case of connotations on 

democracy and human rights as well. The shares of the NPIC and attributions related to the 

personal characteristics are the highest in the sample of history students while “high” cultural 

40


attributions, connotations on positive personal characteristics and historical connotations 

have the highest share in the sample from the departments of Western Literature 

(Departments of English Language & Literature and German Language & Literature). 

Graphic 1. Distribution of connotation groups according to departments (%) 

Interestingly, geography students do not give the highest percentages in geographical 

connotations neither the history students give the highest percentages in historical 

connotations of Europe. However the demographic connotations, as human geographical 

elements, seem to have the highest share in geography students’ sample. It is observed that 

negative connotations, both social and personal, come from history students while the 

positive personal characteristics come from the students who study Western literatures. 

3.1.2. Connotations of Europe. 

The first connotations of the total sample and connotations according to departments are 

presented through a constellation of connotations. 

The First Connotations 

Figure 1 was derived from the analysis of the first words in the list of connotations of each 

participant. PPIC are predominant in the total sample. There is a striking difference between 

PPIC and the rest of the connotation groups. Even the share of the second most common 

connotation group (geographical connotations) remains less than one forth of PPIC. The 

third group includes the negative political-institutional connotations (NPIC) which counted 

for 39 times. Hence, Europe is perceived mostly positive in aspect of its political-institutional 

structure (mostly positive) and geographical features. The frequency of all the other 

connotation groups falls far behind these three groups. 

Connotations according to Departments 

PPICs are dominant in all departments as well but the shares differ as to departments as seen 

in Figure 2. Students studying Western literatures consider “Europe” most positively while 

students from history department give the most negative results. This negative perspective of 

history students is observed also for the connotations on personal characteristics. 

Geographical connotations are common in the samples of both geography and western 

literature departments while individual connotations are common only for those who study 

western literatures. 


41


Figure 1. First connotations of total sample 

Figure 2. First connotations as to departments 

3.1.3. Perspectives on Turkey-Europe Relations. 

The students were asked to write their ideas on Turkey-Europe relations and the texts written 

were subjected to content analysis in order to classify the main perspectives on Europe- 

Turkey relations. 

When considering the perspectives of the participants on Turkey-Europe relations, five 

main categories are seen. With two examples from each category, these perspectives are 

presented in the Table 2, with two examples from each category. According to the results of 

the content analysis, one of the perspectives reflect “an insincere relation” between Turkey 

and Europe which is only based on economic interests and it is the most common in the total 

sample with a share of 40,4%. 

The second perspective is “a positive perspective” supporting the relations –with a 

specific focus on the European Union (18,3%). Another perspective is based on the 

“dependency of Turkey” in mutual relations with Europe (13,5%). The forth perspective 

underlines the “impositions of Europe”, referring to the unacceptable demands of Europe(an 

Union) from Turkey (10,3%) while another perspective can be called “a cautions 

perspective” which attracts attention to the importance and necessity of relations with Europe 

given Turkey does not lose its own cultural values (8,0%). 

Graphic 2, on the other hand, presents the distribution of these different perspectives 

according to the academic departments of the participants. Nearly half of the respondents 

studying Western literatures perceive Turkey-Europe relations in terms of the mutual 

economic interests while in the samples from the other three departments, History, 

Geography and Psychology, shares of this perspective are also quite high: 42,7%, 33,3% and 

34,7% respectively. However, there were noticeable differences in the other perspectives of 

the respondents from different academic departments. The positive perspective is mostly 

common among geography students while history students have a negative perspective, 

giving the highest percentages in the perspectives such as “dependency of Turkey” and 

“impositions of Europe”.The “cautious perspective” which suggests “to be careful about not 

losing the Turkish culture” has a discursive strategy focused on the difference between 

“Turkish” and “European” cultures and has the highest percentage among students from 

psychology department (17,3%). 


42


Table 2. Perspectives on Turkey-Europe relations 

An insincere relation based on only economic interests: 

Europe relates with Turkey in accordance with its benefits. Turkey, on the other hand, strives for acceptance and selling 

itself. However it is seen that Europe seems to get along with well Turkey, but the underlying truth is different (Female, 

19, History). 

There is a kind of relationship between Turkey and Europe which is compulsory for the Turkish side. Europe, on the 

other hand, enriches more and more through relationships with Turkey which is a country serves for Europe’s best 

interests (Female, 19, Psychology). 

Positive Perspective 

Turkey should become a member of the European Union and get wealth as a European country (Male, 19, Geography). 

Turkey worked on adaptation process for the EU but these efforts have slowed down recently. Some demands of EU 

from Turkey are quite difficult to fulfil but EU is the symbol of development and wealth thus it is of great importance for 

Turkey to become a member of European Union (Male, 19, Geography). 

Dependency of Turkey 

Relationship between Turkey and Europe should be in a positive manner but it seems like we (Turkey) are dependent to 

them (European countries). European countries interfere even in the domestic policies of Turkey. We are in such a 

situation that we need to get permission from them. It shouldn’t be like this, Turkey should be respected. (Female, 19, 

Geography) 

Unfortunately, Turkey is dependent to Europe; it is like a toy of Europe! We are persistently making effort to become a 

member of EU so “we” arrange everything according to “them” but I believe nothing will change in a positive way 

even we become a member! (Female, 20, History) 

Impositions of Europe 

The aim of European Union is clear: Dominating over Turkey through unacceptable impositions (Male, 20, History). 

Especially during seven years, Turkey is experiencing a process full of impositions about “being European” (Male, 20, 

History). 

Cautious perspective 

Turkey should build more relations with Europe in order to develop more but while doing this; it should not lose its 

own values and culture (Female, 19, Psychology). 

I believe Turkey has its own sufficient sources for anything! Instead of imitating Europeans, Turkey should transfer 

only the technologic and scientific development. We shouldn’t forget our own cultural inheritance (Female, 22, 

Western Literatures). 

Whatever the type of the perspective that the respondents have is, it is observed that there 

is a common discourse of “us” vs. “them” in the texts as in the examples below: 

“Turkey wants to become a member of the European Union. She tries to fulfil 

the requirements of adaptation process. In the years ahead, either this relation 

will develop in a positive way and Turkey will become a member of the EU, or in 

the end of the negotiation process Turkey will give up, or there will be a 

privileged partnership. I do not believe that they will accept Turkey in the Union 

(Female, 28, Geography). 

Europe is like a hungry monster which demolishes what is not serving for its 

benefit. We must be aware of this. We must be contented, be happy with small 

mercies and love each other (Male, 23, History). 

“…We must take Europe as an example according to the guidance of our 

Great Leader [Kemal Atatürk] but while doing so, we must be elective according 

to our own lifestyle and traditions. After all, we are Turks. …”(Male, 19, 

Geography) 


43


Graphic 2. Main perspectives on Europe-Turkey relations (%) 

Because 80.1% of the participants have never been to a European country; it is not 

possible to compare whether having been to Europe effects the opinion on Europe – Turkey 

relations or not. However, it is a striking finding that those who have been to Europe evaluate 

the Europe-Turkey relations based on only economic benefits (47.4% vs. 34.3%) instead of 

dependency of Turkey to Europe (6.6% vs. 13.7%), compared with the other part of sample. 

4. DISCUSSION 

Attitudes towards Europe and Turkey’s entry to the European Union is a complicated issue in 

contemporary Turkish society and differs according to social identity categories (ethnicity, 

gender etc.) as some studies indicate (Göregenli and Karakuş 2011, Göregenli 2012). The aim 

of this study was to explore the social representations on the relation between Europe and 

Turkey and also understand the representation of Europe in case of Turkish university 

students which is a group with a relatively high educational level in the Turkish society. 

According to the connotation categories generated from the research, “Europe” is represented 

mostly in aspect of its political and institutional characteristics that is to say Europe is a 

concept which is more than only a physical continent or a geographical entity. It is seen that 

these political-institutional connotations are divided into two sub categories, being positive 

and negative. The dominance of positive political institutional connotations such as 

civilization, modernism, development, European Union, strong economy and wealth refers to 

an understanding of Europe as a source of modernization and a better life. Such an 

understanding of Europe does not differ among the participants from different academic 

disciplines. A previous research on the image of Europe among Turkish university students 

(Südaş and Gökten 2012) also indicated that the idea of Europe is linked relatively to 

economic development. Concurrent to this perspective, the understanding of modernisation as 

an extension of westernisation is also prevalent as a common social consent. According to 

this viewpoint, modernisation is interpreted as the reflection at various levels of the 

transformations that are indispensable to the act of importing the western system (Kahraman 

2001:9-10). 

Regarding the perspectives on Europe-Turkey relation, five main categories were 

determined namely, “an insincere relation based on economic interests”, “a positive 

perspective”, “dependency of Turkey”, “cautious perspective” and “impositions of Europe”. 

Most of the participants accept the relation between Turkey and Europe as an “insincere 


44


relation” which is based on “only economic interests”. The perspective putting the 

dependency of Turkey forward refers to a one sided relation which is compulsive for Turkey. 

The perspective based on the impositions of Europe, on the other hand, depicts a “patronizing 

Europe” over Turkey. The positive perspective supports the relation between two sides, 

focusing on the insufficiency of the relations and that Turkey changes in a positive way as a 

result of its ties to Europe. 

It is possible to say that on one hand Europe itself is considered mainly in aspect of its 

positive sides but on the other hand its relation with Turkey is perceived negatively: The 

perspectives are mainly based on an unequal relation which is insincere and sometimes 

threatening and dominating Turkey. Respondents mention the difficulty or even the 

impossibility of the full membership of Turkey to the “European Union” which is the primary 

representation of “Europe”. Arguments such as “Turkey will never be accepted as a member 

of the Union” or “European Union always detains Turkey” are postulated by the participants. 

These arguments are parallel to the findings of a previous study (Sandal-Önal 2007) on the 

social representations of European Union. Sandal-Önal’s findings indicate that interviewees 

do not have the belief of Turkey’s EU membership and there is a negative attribution to the 

EU membership of Turkey through arguments like “EU will not accept Turkey as a member” 

and “EU will continue to detain Turkey’s membership”. 

Connotations related to religion with reference to Christianity and the focus on cultural 

and religious differences that find an expression especially in the “cautious perspective” give 

clue about how respondents construct the Turkey-Europe relations. Relation with Europe is 

desirable as long as it is limited to the transfer of science and technology but when it comes 

to a possible cultural change in Turkey, Europe is perceived as a threat. Sandal-Önal 

(2007:124) also states in her work, a referral to religious affiliations is also present in terms 

of disadvantages premising that “EU membership would cause religious conflicts” and in 

terms of Turkey’s membership to EU stating that “Cultural or religious differences and make 

Turkey’s membership impossible”. Therefore religious differences are attributed as an 

important dimension in terms of the conceptualization of EU. 

Europe may also be understood as a specific idea or socio-spatial experience, something 

that the idea of a “structure of feeling” coined by Williams (1961), partly captures. Williams 

understood the “structure of feeling” as a culture of a period that structures the understanding 

of what takes place. What this in principle means is, of course, a deeply contextual matter in 

both space and time, and it is shaped by such elements as national media, education systems 

and identity narratives (Paasi 2001:9). In our research, it is also possible to see the impact of 

the national media on how Europe is understood in relation to previous studies on the 

representation of Europe in the Turkish mainstream newspapers. According to a research 

looking at the representation of the Turkey’s EU membership process (Aslan 2008), the 

necessity of the full membership of Turkey in the European Union was underlined in the 

newspapers especially after 2004 which was the year when the membership negotiations 

started with Turkey started however the membership expectation was much related to cultural 

references such as “dialogue between civilizations”, “the necessity of the membership to 

prove that the European Union is not a Christianity club” and “Turkey is a bridge between the 

East and the West”. Another study (Sandal-Önal 2007) indicated the media representation of 

EU within the newspapers having three different political views, namely “EU as a must”, 

“EU as a threat” and “EU as difficult”. EU as a threat, again, refers mostly to cultural 

differences. 

It can be concluded that university students develop an idea of “Europe” based on and 

similar to the mainstream image of Europe in the Turkish society too, rather than an image 

which is objective and shaped by their own academic specialization. In the formation of this 

“mainstream image” of Europe, both Turkish media and political discourse play a decisive 


45


role. The representation of Europe is very much related to the European Union, which refers 

to the institutional Europe of Paasi (2001). “European Union is the present day representation 

of “Europe” which has meant modernisation and attaining the West for nearly two centuries. 

In Yavuz’s terms the failure experienced in Turkey during the process of getting 

“Europeanised” stems from perceiving ‘Europe’ as a considerably narrow and restricted 

enlightenment project. According to Yavuz, the adventure of Europeanization for two 

hundred years resulted in Orientalism; that is, “we were not able to get Westernised, but we 

became orientalised” - Orientalism in the sense of perceiving ourselves through the eyes of 

the ‘European’ (Yavuz, 1998:115) and it is still considered as a modernist project. 

It is a question, for both EU and Turkey, which is to what extend Turkey belongs to 

Europe and what are the pliability limitations of Europe are. As Light and Young (2009:298) 

express “the arrival of 10 new EU member states from the countries of the former Eastern 

Europe has produced a new round of questions about the idea of “Europe”. Thus it is no 

doubt that the possible membership of Turkey as a candidate country would bring a new 

dimension to those questions on the idea of Europe. Paasi (2005:582) also comments that 

eastward expansion (of the European Union has brought into play a key territorial element in 

the construction of a new territorial identity for the EU (Kuus 2005). Both for the European 

Union and for Turkey, questioning the territorial identity is of great importance because 

Turkey seems to be the easternmost limit of EU. 

In the given context, social representations of Europe have developed on ideological 

background more than geographical basis or objectivity. “Mismatches between the political 

map and the social and cultural realities of Europe can be explained by what is hidden by 

conventional political borders. An examination of European maps trough time helps to clarify 

the changing nature of borders and confirms that concepts such as nationality, identity, 

ethnicity and citizenship inevitably arise when considering European places and people 

(Keane and Villanueva 2009:2)”. Thus in Turkey, as a country in the pursuit of integration to 

the European map, it is of great importance to make mutual efforts to change the social 

representations of Europe as to include also other various aspects of Europe as well as 

Turkey-EU relations. 

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47



STRATEGIC PLANNING AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN SPANISH 

CITIES 

María J. GONZÁLEZ 

Universidad de León. Departamento de Geografía y Geología (Geography and Geology Department). Facultad 

de Filosofía y Letras, Campus de Vegazana s/n, 24071-León (Spain). 

www.unileon.es, mjgong@unileon.es 

María L. DE LÁZARO 

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, departamento de Geografía Humana (Department of Human Geography), 

Facultad de Geografía e Historia (Faculty of Geography and History), Avda. Profesor Aranguren s/n, Madrid 

28040 

www.ucm.es, mllazaro@ghis.ucm.es 

Abstract: 

The paper investigates how decision-making processes relating to strategic urban projects are 

framed in order to achieve innovative urban sustainable development and contextualize the 

problems which appear in the ten cities chosen as models (those with the highest 

populations). A sustainable city is one that has undertaken a coherent path towards not only 

strictly environmental topics but also themes like economic growth models and citizens’ 

rights, addressing fundamental issues that are interconnected. These are mainly land use, 

natural resources and mobility, social cohesion and inclusion projects, expanding information 

and communication technologies. The aim of this work is to discuss these clearly related 

themes from a standpoint of sustainable development and strategic planning. In recent years 

there has been a growing interest in sustainable development as a guiding principle to allow 

the integration of economic development and the environment within policy and strategy. 

Keywords: sustainable development, cities, strategic planning. 


One question that inevitably arises, after examining the environmental situation of cities and 

conurbations, is simple and direct: are they sustainable? It is not necessary to carry out a 

detailed analysis to verify that they are far from it. Could they become sustainable? In order to 

answer this question it is necessary to combine, on the one hand, instruments and resources 

available for responding and, on the other hand, the willingness to go forward. “In these terms 

a sustainable city is one that actively contributes to the (economic) well-being of a 

community” (Bertinelli, Srobl, 2007). This is certainly the case of ambitious projects that aim 

at integrating economic, social and ecological qualities (Raco,2005). 


48

Gonzalez J. M.,- De Lazaro M../ European Journal of Geography 4 1 48-63 (2013) 

This paper contributes to theoretical debates on the utility of strategic planning to 

sustainably develop cities. Over the last few years, development policies have increased their 

protagonism in all administrative areas from regional to provincial, county community or 

strictly on a local scale. So-called Strategic Planning attempts to clarify the question of 

development, identifying the territories, contents and autonomous actors with which it is 

possible to create a successful scenario for sustainable development (Salet, 2008; Conroy & 

Berke, 2004). 

Richard Rogers, the famous British architect, states that a sustainable city is, above all, a 

just city (where justice, food, shelter, education, health and opportunities are adequately 

distributed and where all residents feel they participate in its governance); a beautiful city 

(where art, architecture and landscapes promote imagination and stir the spirit); a creative city 

(where wide vistas and experimentation mobilise all human resource potential and allow 

faster reaction in the face of change); an ecological city (that minimises its ecological impact, 

where the relationship between built space and landscape is one of balance and where 

infrastructures are able to use resources in a safe and efficient manner); a city that favours 

contact (where public spaces induce community living and the mobility of their residents and 

where information is interchanged both personally and through different technologies); a 

compact and polycentric city (that protects its surroundings, centres and integrates 

communities into neighbourhoods and optimises their proximity); a diverse city (in which the 

level of diversity and intensity of activities encourages, inspires and promotes a human, lively 

and dynamic community) (Rogers, 2000). 

When discussing sustainable development, it is typical to mention the ability to satisfy 

four separate parameters at the same time. In short, it is about simultaneously fulfilling goals 

of a better quality environment, better economic conditions and a society that is more just, 

participates more and which also considers the rights of future generations. Applying this 

concept to cities implies the need to introduce the concept of metabolism to urban settlements 

(Rueda, 2007). A more sustainable city is one that is able to reduce the number of external 

resources that are needed (land, energy, water and materials), curb the production of waste 

(air and water contamination and/or solid waste) and, at the same time, improve living 

conditions (health, revenue, housing, leisure, accessibility, public spaces and sense of 

belonging) (Cowell and Owens, 2006). To accomplish that, it is first necessary to 

acknowledge the problem. There is a need for information, facts upon which to build an 

understanding and expand social perception of the inadequate and unsustainable way life 

takes place in cities. There is also a need for plans of action, initiatives that deal with 

amending the situation right from the beginning; with that in mind, a good way to get started 

is via Local Agenda 21 (used world wide), which encompasses and provides some strategic 

sense for the set of actions required in so many different fields (Brownill and Carpenter, 

2009). 

In short, the future of the current urban management model is very limited. To find a 

sustainable model that is efficient for its “employees” – the citizens – it is essential to 

guarantee the future of cities in the 21st century, which, thanks to new technologies, will 

undergo a major revolution within the next few decades (Jordan, 2008). 

This paper is set out as follows: section 1 is the introduction. Section 2, sustainability and 

new answers to environmental challenges. Section 3, strategic thinking, flexible alternatives 

and globalization. Section 4, analysis and challenges for urban sustainability. The last section 

contains the conclusions. 

2. SUSTAINABILITY AND NEW ANSWERS TO ENVIRONMENTAL 

CHALLENGES 


49


In the mid-fifties, the first voices warned of the dangers of forms of economic growth which, 

using high-handed and arrogant logic, underestimated all the negative effects of development 

and material progress understood to be unlimited. Despite the ambiguity of the term it was 

agreed that we refer to sustainable development under the following conditions: 

- Development is understood to be an objective with which basic human needs are 

satisfied, achieving reasonable standards of welfare for everybody (the first parameter 

of development). 

- This development is linked to obtaining more reasonable levels of welfare within a 

determined society and in all societies as a whole (the second parameter of 

development). 

The Rio Declaration, together with Agenda 21 1 , can be taken as the starting point for 

defining those characteristics of the sustainable development process which distinguishes it 

from other forms of development (OSE, 2012). This interpretation of sustainable 

development emphasises two key principles: 

- Integration of economic, social, and environmental objectives; and 

- Wide participation of stakeholders in the development process. 

The first of these principles (integration) means that sustainable development entails 

balancing the economic, social, and environmental objectives of society in decision-making. 

The development of strategic plans is essential to this principle. 

The second principle (participation and consensus) is equally strongly emphasised in Agenda 

21, which states (chapter 23) that "one of the fundamental pre-requisites of sustainable 

development is broad public participation in decision-making" (Cherp et al., 2004). 

The European Commission is the highest administrative level supporting and collaborating 

with local governments to promote these transformations notably through an urban 

environment programme in which the following goals are put forth: improving ambient air 

quality, reducing noise pollution and reducing land pollution in European cities (Hamedinger 

et al., 2008; Olewiler, 2004). An initiative launched during the Third European Conference on 

Sustainable Cities & Towns in 2000 (Hannover, Germany) established the European 

Common Indicators system towards urban sustainability. It encompasses ten indicators (five 

mandatory and five complementary) that aim to follow evolution and compare progress in 

European cities (table 1). 

Table 1. Common European indicators towards urban sustainability 

Main Indicators 

Citizen satisfaction with the local 

community (perception) 

Local contribution to global climatic change 

(CO 2 emissions) 

Local mobility and passenger transportation 

(distances and means of transportation) 

Availability of local public open areas and 

services (proximity and accessibility) 

Quality of local ambient air (number of days 

when limits are exceeded) 

Complementary Indicators 

Childrens' journeys to and from school (means of 

transportation to and from school) 

Sustainable management of the local authority and local 

business (percentage of companies or institutions with 

environmental management systems in place) 

Noise pollution (percentage of population exposed to 

harmful noise pollution levels) 

Sustainable land use (regeneration and land protection) 

Products promoting sustainability (percentage of ecolabelled, 

organic or fair-trade products) 

A few Spanish cities (Saragossa, Barcelona (table 3)) are part of this original nucleus, 

providing information and specific indicators for a comparative analysis. As can be observed, 


50


this reduced group of indicators illustrates the complexity of the topics that affect 

sustainability at local level. 

Therefore, the degree of citizens’ satisfaction with the local community in which they live 

is very high in Spanish cities when compared to other countries (Vitoria ranks the highest in 

Spain, with 75% of its citizens being very satisfied 2 ). However, these high marks are 

shadowed by the results obtained for other indicators, namely those concerning housing, for 

which the lowest degree of satisfaction is observed. (table 3). 

Local Agenda 21, yielding positive consequences, has promoted new sustainability 

policies at local level. At an international level, cities were the entities that most 

enthusiastically responded to the Rio Earth Summit’s call for new strategic and participative 

processes to convert traditional development models (Subirats et al, 2001). Likewise, Spanish 

cities have entered the Local Agenda 21 movement. 

Cities such as Saragossa and Barcelona were pioneers, incorporating new methodologies 

(SWOT matrix) and priorities redirecting public action at local level. Other large cities (table 

3) also emphasize their commitment to this. The Metropolitan Area of Barcelona with its 

almost 200 municipalities has become a model for promoting local networks that are able to 

meet new challenges. 

In Spain, and despite its limitations, Local Agenda 21 can already boast three positive 

effects that will nonetheless require a final assessment of these tangible results: 

- It imbues the development issue with a more trans-sectorial logic and a more holistic 

approach. Based on the premise of local and global responsibility, there is a 

correlation of many aspects that go beyond classical urban policies. In addition, 

natural resource management issues are integrated with issues of urban planning, 

mobility management, economic development and, to some extent, social cohesion 

(White and Engelen, 2000). The combination of criteria and principles of 

sustainability is allowing for a shift in the way local policies are managed: from street 

cleaning to waste management, from lighting to energy efficiency, and so forth. 

- Local Agenda 21 actions assume new strategic planning instruments that combine 

environmental dimensions and dominant economic dimensions. Less frequently, 

social dimensions are added. Changes that imply a transition towards models that are 

more sustainable must undoubtedly be gradual in time, introducing a medium to longterm 

horizon typical of strategic planning. This desirable vision of the future for cities 

stems from the strength derived from Local Agenda 21 more than from other 

instruments. 

- In several Spanish cities (table 3), Local Agenda 21 is proposing the opportunity for 

renewal, innovation and enhancement of participative processes. Bringing the 

community into these strategic processes of gradual change is a sine qua non 

condition for their success. Along those lines, Local Agenda 21 offers scenarios and 

processes likely to strengthen the community. A few cities (table 3) have focused on 

governance, where different actors are part of the process and actively take up their 

share of the responsibility regarding common goals and objectives. Hence, these are 

participative processes directed at establishing a different relationship between local 

authorities and different stakeholders. 

In short, topics such as water or energy consumption and waste production are about 

adjusting the value to the cost. Using public transportation, saving water, using electric or 

low-pollution vehicles and energy efficiency and saving are items that should be 

contemplated with favourable taxation. At local level and in the absence of broader policies, 

these strategic indicators can undertake an innovative role. Introducing an environmental 

variable in local taxes such as council tax, business tax or rubbish collection - without 


51


increasing the fiscal load per capita– could become an important contribution to speeding up 

changes in favour of urban sustainability. 

Finally, cities play a fundamental role in the shifts of habits and values of citizenship with 

respect to the new model of sustainable development. Environmental awareness, education 

and information campaigns can generate effective scenarios for social change within the local 

framework, because they use feedback from public participation processes and are thus more 

permeable to influence from organisations (Instituto de Gobierno y Políticas Públicas 

(UAB) - Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, 2002). 

3. STRATEGIC THINKING, FLEXIBLE ALTERNATIVES AND 

GLOBALIZATION 

Strategic thinking as applied to urban processes is a fairly new concept dating back to the 

1980s, with its roots in military planning and adopted first by the business world. Global 

consideration of the processes that affect citizens is advisable when it is included in any 

initiative whose aim is to plan for the future or to define planning. Cities experiencing strong 

competition with other cities or even within their own neighbourhoods might use this 

documental framework to understand, project and intervene. Despite the relatively limited 

importance of the environment as a policy objective within formal policy documentation, a 

large proportion of local authorities have initiatives in place, or planned, which attempt to 

combine economic development and environmental aims (Gibbs et al.1998). 

In general terms, it can be stated that strategic plans over the last twenty years have acted 

reasonably well as instruments of strategic reflection, as processes of public-private 

consensus and inter-administrative coordination, and as frameworks for formulating strategies 

in the local and territorial sphere. Without overriding the other planning systems in the 

territory, the strategic plans have meant creating a state of opinion, motivating institutions and 

introducing reflections oriented in the long term towards having more developed cities, 

bearing sustainability in mind (Golden, 2006). Allmendinger and Haughton (2007) note that 

this emphasis on ‘joining up’ has a political purpose, for example, to place demands for 

environmental sustainability within the context of the continued need for economic growth, 

thus the need to formulate strategic plans (Fernández, 2004). 

The ideas and practice of strategic planning have evolved over time. It has become 

generally recognised that the planning process rarely follows the ‘rational’ model of a 

sequential cycle of formulation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Instead, 

planning occurs as a continuous and iterative process, in which important decisions are 

frequently taken during the implementation stage, and monitoring and evaluation occur in 

advance of final outputs and outcomes. Thus, although current understanding of strategic 

planning retains the idea of planning as being about setting goals and identifying the means of 

achieving them, it has moved away from a fixed plan and solutions, to an adaptive process, 

involving the management of change as it affects conditions, constraints, and resources. 

Second, it involves a shift away from the view that the state alone is responsible for 

development, to one in which various stakeholders are involved in the planning processes of 

dialogue and accountability. Third, strategic planning involves a comprehensive and holistic 

approach which seeks to integrate the full range of available resources, and to build on 

existing policies and initiatives. The importance of the implementation phase in the planning 

cycle has also been increasingly emphasised. Thus, the current understanding of effective 

strategic planning stresses its strong linkages with good strategic management (Cherp et al., 

2004). 


52


In Spain the strategic planning culture is already valued as an effective mechanism for 

defining and articulating the needs and interests of society and its economic, social and 

institutional agents as regards new scenarios in the future (table 3). Summarising, everything 

seems to indicate that strategic planning has gained maturity, balance and acceptance and has 

evolved sufficiently to provide an appropriate response to the problems of governability faced 

by our cities. It has been accepted as a new instrument for sustainable urban development, 

with a clear current potential for making positive contributions to our cities. Strategic 

planning has been accepted in many cities as a process which adds value to traditional 

planning. In fact, not only is the validity of strategic planning in the urban area being debated, 

but attempts are being made to extend it to town and country planning. Its capacity for 

promoting governability and reinforcing social assets in urban areas is also openly recognised 

(Borja, 2003). 

The evaluation of urban sustainability has changed depending on the different urban 

visions. Today it has exceeded the horizon of basic needs satisfied and the construction of 

indicators is associated with the integrity of concepts such as habitat, sustainability, 

complexity and integration of social, economic and ambient dimensions. Strategic planning is 

a technique that has been applied to multiple facets of human activity; just remember Sun Tzu 

(1963), Arthur Thompson (2004) or Henry Mintzberg (1990); however, the application of 

strategic planning to urban reality is relatively recent and its beginnings are eminently 

practical: a mixture of thought, techniques and art or good work. 

SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, 

Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. This 

methodology is used in the cities selected (table 3). It involves specifying the objective of the 

business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favourable 

and unfavourable to achieving that objective. The technique is credited to Albert Humphrey, 

who led a research project at Stanford University in the 1960s and 1970s): it is recognized as 

the first technique and a valuable instrument of strategic analysis. Analysis consists of four 

steps: External analysis, internal analysis, SWOT matrix preparation and determination of the 

strategy to be used. The SWOT matrix correlates internal aspects (Strengths and Weaknesses) 

with external ones (Opportunities and Threats) (Aaker,1992) (Table 2). 

Table 2. The SWOT matrix 

Weaknesses 

They constitute the main negative factors of the 

city which, if not overcome, will prevent the 

mission from being accomplished. 

Strengths 

They are defined as the main factors of the city 

which constitute the most powerful elements and 

provide support for the mission to be 

accomplished. 

Threats 

They are environmental factors that cannot be 

affected, prevented or provoked, but which, if this 

happens, can affect the functioning of the system and 

make mission accomplishment difficult or prevent it. 

Opportunities 

They are the elements that can appear in the 

environment without any possibility of affecting their 

appearance or not, but it is possible to make use of 

them if action is taken in this direction, making 

mission accomplishment possible or favouring it. 

The typical SWOT analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that 

define strategic action brings back a degree of effectiveness that had been lost due to the 

rigidity of conventional urban discourse. Urbanism’s loss of creative ability and innovation 

power has been the consequence of a progressive juridification of planning. One of the keys 


53


to successful strategic planning resides in the absence of a discourse focused on legitimising 

economic interests, an aspect that is inherent to customary urban practice. Secondly, strategic 

planning lends itself to active participation, allowing the interchange of many diverse points 

of view and thus facilitating the search for rational and consensual solutions. Thirdly, the 

range of its possible contents renders it an adequate medium for addressing studies, proposing 

projects and developing programmes whose initiatives proceed from restricted sectors with 

limited capability to carry them out. In this case, it would be possible to find project 

development related to Agenda 21, processes of commercial regeneration, assistance 

programmes, etc (table 3). Not only can these actions be developed, they should be boosted 

and supported with other actions along strategic paths as well, so that they can be mutual 

primers, prompting synergies that are more powerful and employing equal resources 

(Albrechts , 2004). 

Table 3. Ten largest Municipalities in Spain 

Territory 

Country 

Municipality 

Population 

(Nº of inhabitants) 

Population 

density 

(inhab/km²) 

Strategic Plan Local Agenda 21 

Madrid 3,265,038 5 374 2005-15 Yes 

Barcelona 1,615,448 15 991 

Valencia 798,033 6 046 

Seville 703,021 4 994 

Saragossa 674,317 692 

Malaga 568,030 1 438 

Murcia 442,203 495 

1987,2006-10 

Vision 2020 

1995,2007-15 

2010-2020 

2001-2010 

Seville 2020 

1998,2006, 

Saragossa 2020 

1992,2006, 

2010 

2008-10, 2007-13 

2014-2020 

Yes 

Yes 

Yes 

Yes 

Yes 

Yes 

Palma de Mallorca 405,318 1 923 2007,2012-15 Yes 

Las Palmas de 

Gran Canaria 

383,343 3 797 

1989,2004-07 

Proa 2020 

Yes 

Bilbao 352,700 8 729 2004-07,2010 Yes 

Sources: Instituto Nacional de Estadística. INE, 2012, in www.ine. Ministerio de Administraciones 

Públicas, in www.map.es. Ayuntamientos (City Councils) 

The multidimensional character of the strategic plan and its implications are the 

consequences of the variety of pursued interests and the wide social response that sustains it. 

This path points to a return to Urban Regeneration philosophy. 

Thus, strategic planning is a commitment made by the most representative institutions of 

urban society that establishes a vision of a city and a series/group of objectives and actions 

agreed upon by consensus. Economic, social and political changes in recent years have 

determined the right framework for all institutions and people that make up a city to promote 

its development in an organised way. For this reason approximately 100 social, professional, 

academic and business institutions, as well as those at different government levels, have been 


54


preparing Strategic Plans for cities and have put them into practice. The challenge consists of 

honouring the proposed commitment to build a better, more competitive, consolidated and 

open city, the main aim being better distribution of wealth and progressive and extensive 

improvement of all sectors of society, in other words, to improve the quality of life for 

everyone in a healthier environment (Garcia, 2004). Making good use of the city’s resources 

in education, health, tourism, business and promoting their consolidation, extension and 

publication in an environment that will benefit from them is a central part of the strategic 

proposal in the cities selected (table 3). 

The main motivation of the Strategic Plans in the ten cities (table 3) is to increase the 

general economic level and quality of life of all city inhabitants. A favourable social 

environment is necessary to improve the economy and generate wealth and welfare that will 

lead to a beautiful habitable city. The success of these Strategic Plans lies in the efficacy with 

which the link between the general direction taken by the city and its quality can be 

strengthened. It would be absurd to make any economic progress if this deteriorated its urban 

and environmental quality. Economic strength and development pressures can produce 

various types or models of urban development; in the face of this, it is necessary, with the 

participation of society as a whole, to build a city based on a development model with the 

highest social and cultural objectives. 

According to Wright (2007) three basic points of the strategy are used in Spanish cities: 

1) the formation of the strategy 

2) putting it into practise 

3) strategic control (changing the strategy or its implementation to guarantee the desired 

results.) 

Therefore, the strategic concept does not ignore the conflict but understands reality as 

being the result of interaction between several partial visions of all those involved in the 

planning process. Planners thus have the power to put previously chosen actions into effect. 

4. ANALYSIS AND CHALLENGES FOR URBAN SUSTAINABILITY 

Embarking on the road to urban sustainability in any city cannot merely be a combination of 

good intentions and generic declarations, sprinkled with some more or less exemplary 

measures. If we creatively follow the pathway already set out in some places with initiatives 

such as Local Agenda 21, we can expect a certain "contamination" effect to occur in each and 

every urban policy. So one cannot defend a sustainable model of urban mobility and, at the 

same time, carry out actions on many other contrary or at least contradictory fronts without 

risking failure (Bruff, Wood, 2000). 

Our impression is that the urbanisation of our societies is continuing its unstoppable 

progress without, in general, considering these aspects, in spite of talking about urban 

sustainability or Local Agenda 21 more or less rhetorically. Cities nowadays consume three 

quarters of world energy and produce at least 75% of total pollution. Their numbers continue 

to grow, as do their inhabitants. In 2012 there were 41 cities with over five million 

inhabitants, of which 10 were in developed countries. Three hundred large urban 

conglomerations (over 100,000 inhabitants) have been calculated to exist in Europe and 35 

have populations of over one million. Among them are Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and 

Seville; and with almost one million we have Bilbao and Malaga (Lázaro and González, 

2002). 

The European Union is paying increasingly more attention to this. A set of local sensitivity 

indicators was approved at a recent summit held in Hannover. They should serve as a guide 

and comparative framework for European cities. Some progress has been made in various 


55


Spanish cities (table 3) in this area and some have signed the Aalborg Charter (González, 

2002, 2005, 2006). 

As we have seen, cities concentrate a growing proportion of the population, which is 

around 80% in Europe. This is only indicative because the condition of being a city does not 

respond to a single model or legal definition. In fact, statistical data defined by the number of 

inhabitants (over 5,000; over 20,000; ...), by minimum density, by functional structure, etc. 

coexist. In Spain 85% of the population is considered urban because it lives in towns of over 

5,000 inhabitants, but this would be 50.7% if we took populations of over 50,000 as the 

reference. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that the increasing urbanisation of Spanish 

society indicates that this is one of the areas where the transition towards sustainability is 

gambling on its future. Nevertheless, western cities also symbolize the most unsustainable 

form of development because they are the neuralgic centres of unlimited growth that 

prevailed as a model in the 19 th and 20 th centuries. The cities signing the Aalborg Charter - 

currently over 1,200 – recognize “Our present urban life style, in particular our patterns of 

division of labour and functions, land-use, transport, industrial production, agriculture, 

consumption, and leisure activities, and hence our standard of living, make us particularly 

responsible for many environmental problems faced by humankind” (Moreno, 2005). 

The most decisive challenges of this new notion involve all urban dimensions, but 

basically focus on reducing the environmental impact of cities, of the effects produced by 

concentrating many people and resources in a small space. This produces a huge quantity of 

waste and negative effects on the environment at the same time. Experts have analysed the 

city along these lines for some time as an ecosystem that generates a metabolism which flows 

both inwards and outwards. From this viewpoint, reduction of the environmental impact of 

cities focuses on two interconnected aspects: on the one hand, decreased consumption – of 

energy, natural resources, land, etc – and, on the other, minimizing the externalities of urban 

metabolism (pollution, emissions, waste) (Nello, 2001). 

Similarly a productive area much larger than the city’s surface area is required for it to 

function, so the environmental impact generated by an urban system goes beyond its limits. 

In order to maintain their present standard of living it is calculated that the inhabitants of 

Spanish cities require an average of three to four hectares of productive land outside the city 

limits per year. This is known as the “ecological footprint” 3 . Some North American or North 

European cities require double that figure, over seven hectares per inhabitant per year. This 

global impact of local urban systems explains why cities are open metabolic systems, that is, 

they are not isolated but rather need to maintain relations with their environment, exchanging 

energy and materials to survive and function. The difference between the urban metabolism 

and the natural ecosystem lies in this huge consumption of energy or materials, whose main 

purpose is not the survival of the inhabitants, but rather to feed the city so that it can function 

as an artificial system (building, transport, lighting, etc.). 

Some dimensions are particularly relevant from this perspective, and the most relevant to 

this purpose are land-use (linked to the city model), energy consumption (with the mobility 

model being of particular importance) and urban waste treatment. All these aspects have a 

common denominator: increased consumption, which is generally not proportional to the 

evolution of the population and is the basis of most socio-environmental problems in our 

cities. The quantity of cars, urbanised surface area, waste production, energy consumption 

increases …and, therefore, if nobody remedies this, the cities will see their own 

unsustainability grow. We will therefore try to concentrate on these dimensions, as the cities’ 

capacity for evolving towards a more sustainable model of management and coexistence is on 

the line 4 . 


56


The ten cities were chosen because they have the highest populations and have put 

Agenda 21 into action to adopt integrated policies that include sustainability. In order to make 

these policies part of town planning, they have developed strategic plans that contribute to a 

qualitative change in local administration and generate greater awareness of environmental 

problems, and have made participation in decision-making easier at a local level. The ten 

largest Spanish cities represent over 20% of the total population (Table 3). 

The concept of strategic planning was exclusively linked to businesses until 25 years ago 

when San Francisco drew up its first strategic plan. This application to the urban phenomenon 

was a novelty because it viewed the city as a system with complex internal and external 

relations. 

In Spain, Barcelona is the pioneer in this aspect, since its Economic and Social Strategic 

Plan was applied in 1987. A first generation of strategic plans was produced on the basis of 

this initiative and the most significant were those of Metropolitan Bilbao (1989), Malaga 

(1992), Valencia (1995) or Saragossa (1998) (table 3). 

The characteristics repeated in all these processes are the involvement of the main economic 

and social agents of the city, who work together, and the desire to improve the citizens’ 

quality of life. 

The main concerns of the municipal managers of those years focused on guaranteeing 

employment, attracting investors from outside and winning public funds. Currently the main 

objective of local government is to “sell the city” so they cite the need to make local 

businesses competitive, for investment in technological innovation, penetration of external 

markets and training the workforce. Terms such as competitive positioning, marketing 

actions, brand image, etc, are common when we speak of local or regional organisations or 

cities today (Van Bueren and Ten Heuvelhof , 2005). 

In this way, just as the needs of cities have changed, so must Urban Strategic Planning be 

renewed, since it is a continuous, circular process, dependent on feedback and constant 

revision. At present many institutions, experts and persons linked to strategic planning have 

updated strategic thinking to adapt to these changes, imbued with globalisation and the 

gamble on sustainability (Albrechts, 2004). 

4.1. Strategic Plans of Spain’s Ten Largest Cities 5 

Madrid’s strategic plans comprise several different sub-topics. Nevertheless, the main 

keyword is “infrastructure”. Starting with commerce, one main objective is to convert 

traditional markets into more open space, accessible to everybody. The markets’ 

infrastructure has to be changed and improved to fit in with a desired improved image. 

Furthermore, fostering and development are the necessary preconditions to make Madrid’s 

virtual markets more attractive. Summing up, Madrid’s main goal is to achieve a greater level 

of infrastructure in the fields of tourism, public transport, public agencies, as well as industry 

and other types of business. 

Barcelona’s strategic plan can be summarised by the key word “change”. Here, the 

strategic plan focuses on high standards of services and supplies as well as the promotion of 

institutional coordination to develop metropolitan projects and therefore guarantee an 

efficient management of territory. This aspect also includes the provision of entrepreneurial 

infrastructure. Summing up, Barcelona focuses on its role as an innovator in the commercial 

field (key word “change”). Innovation as well as cooperation with other cities is listed high up 

in the agenda. Concerning the standard of life, the challenges of immigration and integration 

are tackled by fostering public services and support. 

Valencia’s strategic plan stands under the sign of renovation. First of all, the lack of 

provision of IT-infrastructure is admitted and therefore this has to be brought up to common 


57


standards. The latter measure is also seen as an impulse towards reinforcing the local identity. 

Summing up, Valencia focuses on the development of (IT-) infrastructure and revitalisation 

of the city to become more attractive for businesses, citizens and tourism. 

Seville’s strategic plan is a continuation of the current development. The city wants to 

establish itself as a node for human development and cultural interchange. Summing up, 

Seville focuses on being an intermediary between the east and the west using New 

Technologies to support this trend and apply measures for sustainability. Tolerance and 

solidarity play a major role in the strategic plan, which is also used to foster and improve the 

image of the city for business and tourist purposes. 

Saragossa’s strategic plan has a clear focus on social aspects. Integration between 

different age groups and cultures is granted high priority. Furthermore, the production of 

renewable energy is stated as an outstanding goal. Along with this strategy, the reduction of 

water use and the improvement of the quality of water are seen as other crucial issues. 

Saragossa’s strategic plan focuses on the improvement of social issues as well as industry in 

the field of high technology. 

Malaga’s strategic plan can be summarised by the terms “sustainability” and 

“transparency” and focuses on the development of visible capital, such as the maintenance of 

the city and environmental protection, so as to become more attractive for the important 

economical branch of tourism. 

Murcia tries to catch up with other European cities in terms of employment and the 

creation of innovative companies and tries to establish its own identity as a link between 

Africa and Europe. One basic goal is to achieve diversification in the different economic 

sectors. Furthermore, a harmonized interaction between companies, the city and the 

environment is desired. 

Palma’s (Mallorca) main goals are to increase the attractiveness of the city (especially for 

tourists) and the meeting of basic infrastructure and housing as well as sufficient access points 

within the city. Las Palmas (Canarias) is focused on innovation to enable it to catch up with 

EU standards and provide sustainability, not just in tourism but more so in the education and 

employment sector. 

Bilbao bases its strategic plan on the following issues: the improvement of the educational 

sector along with the provision of infrastructure should make Bilbao a city of interest for 

innovative companies. Taking interest in improving the quality of life by considering 

environmental aspects as well as social and cultural issues, the city of Bilbao should become a 

place for people with ambitions, innovative ideas and dynamics. 

Each of the ten cities observed provides a strategic plan. Although the sizes of those 

places vary from over three million people in Madrid to about 350 thousand inhabitants in 

Bilbao, certain similarities are observed. To begin with, each city is covering several aspects, 

such as tourism, infrastructure, administration, business and education. Within this range, it is 

interesting to see how certain issues are dealt with. Two of the most striking strategic plans, 

because of their opposing methods of presentation, are those of Saragossa and Seville. While 

the first plan is written in quite a self-critical way, admitting several downfalls that have not 

been dealt with yet (e.g. social issues, such as housing), the latter is presented in a more self 

confident way, which also transmits the optimistic view of the writers as well as giving the 

impression that something is being done. 

Focusing on tourism, most of the cities observed follow the objective of increasing their 

attractiveness by implementing new measures such as transparent information (e.g. Las 

Palmas de Gran Canaria), improvement in infrastructure (e.g. Madrid) or cooperation with the 

hinterland and other cities (e.g. Seville). While Malaga, for example, counts on language 

tourism in combination with its attractive location by the sea, cities like Saragossa, Seville or 


58


Las Palmas focus on measures to improve their infrastructure and promote trade fairs and the 

respective branch of tourism. 

Dealing with social aspects, cities with a high number of immigrants, such as Barcelona, 

Seville and others, set the objective towards better integration of migrant groups as well as the 

improvement (by means of provision for housing, infrastructure, etc.) of social conditions. 

Saragossa, on the other hand, situated in the northern central part of the country, deals more 

with integration according to different age and social groups. 

Commercially seen, each city wants to establish its own branch, on which a certain image 

should be constructed. Every strategic plan contains references to different aspects of 

cooperation among businesses and institutions as well as Universities. Another trend of 

focusing on new technologies is seen as well. Especially bigger cities such as Madrid, 

Valencia, or Seville focus on the establishment and expansion of IT-networks. 

Another interesting aspect is observed when going into detail concerning the level of 

development. While bigger cities have supposedly started earlier to develop their 

infrastructure, (this feature can be explained by the fact that cities like Madrid have to invest 

more to improve the infrastructure because of an increased demand), smaller areas such as 

Murcia, or Las Palmas de Gran Canaria focus on reaching certain EU standards in relation to 

infrastructure and development. This indicates that the awareness of the importance of 

development in those supposedly smaller towns has appeared later than in bigger cities. 

5. CONCLUSIONS 

The language of sustainability requires the determination of those common basic minimum 

thresholds on the basis of which we must design the priority strategies that will allow us to 

draw up global political guidelines, to be specified in the short, medium and long term. The 

prior definition of environmental indicators is a fundamental part of this new language. The 

indicators are quantitative and qualitative parameters that allow the state of the environmental 

question to be evaluated and, above all, permit us to analyze its evolution by comparing the 

same indicators over a period of time. 

According to the proposed scenario, cities offer varied and diverse challenges and 

opportunities depending on their size and population, geographical, geopolitical and 

environmental situation and their production profile. These will also depend on the culture of 

their inhabitants, the policy on quality of life, the administrative capacity of their leaders and 

the degree of organisation of the civil society. For all these reasons it is difficult to make 

general statements, since sustainable development and planning depend on many private and 

public agents. So each of the weak points must be faced as a priority in each city. 

The transfer of strategic planning to the area of urban development can be explained by a 

series of significant phenomena that have forced the ruling status quo in urban planning to be 

modified. Firstly, the dynamism of the environment, reflected in economic change, 

geopolitical turbulence, incessant technological innovation, modifications in socio-cultural 

attitudes and complete changes of direction in social structures, have exercised intense 

pressure on the traditional instruments of urban planning, demanding appropriate responses to 

the new situation. 

Secondly, the various social and economic agents, who have traditionally acted in the city, 

have started to insist on compliance with a series of requirements of competitiveness and 

habitability as a condition for their remaining in a specific urban area, which has made public 

managers consider their demands and count on them in the decision-making process. 

Thirdly, the integration of nation-states into continental blocks and the opening of 

markets at a global level have given rise to open rivalry between cities to capture investment, 


59


jobs, visitors and public funds. This competition has demanded from the planners and 

managers a huge capacity for anticipation and, in its absence, a reaction to the strategies of 

their most direct competitors. 

Finally, the complexity and interlinking of the problems lashing modern cities has pushed 

them towards using multidisciplinary and intersectorial approaches that overcome the 

limitations of traditional sectorial planning. 

In Spanish cities, most administrative initiatives are related to urban development. The 

experience of these ten cities provides compelling evidence of the emerging complexity in 

governance of planning. The contradictions are deepened through the promotion of particular 

governance arrangements as being essential to the creation of better places. In Spain this is 

illustrated by the ideology that networked governance is integral to achieving sustainable 

communities. 

The proposed assessment methodology may be incorporated into a country's own strategic 

planning process, to provide for the review of the effectiveness of the entire planning process 

as a strategy for sustainable development. It also provides support for any other systems that 

may be in place in the country to monitor the implementation of strategic plans for the 

achievement of economic, social, and environmental objectives. It is intended that countries 

may use the methodology proposed here, to undertake an initial assessment of their progress 

towards implementing effective strategies for sustainable development, and repeat the 

assessment periodically as part of the overall strategic planning process. 

Spanish cities have potential for improvement. While bigger cities have to cope more 

with the expansion of their territory and increase in population as well as infrastructural 

problems (due to altered needs), smaller cities tend to either surpass certain steps of 

development and focus on the latest technologies and provision of the respective 

infrastructures, or try to catch up with EU levels in terms of quality and provision of basic 

infrastructure. All in all, those different stages of and focuses on development have a lot to do 

with the geographical situation, the history and the people behind the administrative body. 

Acknowledgements 

Data for this paper were obtained as part of the research project BSO2002-02432 with the financial 

support by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology. 

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Endnotes 

1 Local Agenda 21, product of the Rio world environment summit held in 1992, proposes a 

significant number of local management actions to attain sustainable development. 


62


2 Plan estratégico al 2011 del Ayuntamiento de Vitoria (Vitoria, Spain, city council strategic 

plan for 2011). 

3 http://www.nodo50.org/worldwatch, last accessed on June 2008. 

4 http://www.iclei.org, last accessed on January 2008. 

5 

City councils strategic plans. The webpage of each city council contains their strategic plan. 


63



MEASURING EQUITY AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH 

ACCESSIBILITY TO PUBLIC SERVICES BY PUBLIC TRANSPORT. THE CASE 

OF THE METROPOLITAN AREA OF VALENCIA (SPAIN) 

María-Dolores PITARCH GARRIDO 

Instituto Interuniversitario de Desarrollo Local Departamento de Geografía Universitat de València, Av. 

Blasco Ibáñez, 28, 46010 Valencia SPAIN 

http://www.uv.es/uvweb/departament_geografia/en/departament-geografia-1285858446156.html, 

maria.pitarch@uv.es 

Abstract 

Spatial equity in complex spaces such as metropolitan areas is a very interesting subject for 

research, particularly in view of its enormous potential public policy applicability. An 

approach to the subject based on the population's access to essential public services 

(education, health care and social services) is proposed. Geographic Information System 

(GIS) tools have made a powerful contribution to the ease with which both spatial and 

statistical data can be handled. The study covers the Metropolitan Area of Valencia, in Spain. 

It is based on the location of public facilities and the population's ability to move around 

using public transport. Its objective is to give a general overview of the situation and point to 

problem zones, with the aim of suggesting answers for these that could help to improve social 

and spatial sustainability and equity in this metropolitan area. 

Keywords: Spatial equity, accessibility, public services. Valencia Metropolitan Area, social sustainability, 

mobility 


The study reported in this paper aimed to measure equity in the population's access to basic 

public services, based on their accessibility to the population as a whole, by means of a GIS 

(Geographic Information System). The study area is a Spanish metropolitan area, in this case 

Valencia. Its inherent spatial complexity makes it a laboratory-territory of the utmost interest 

for verifying the results at local level. The applied part of this study comprises two major 

sections: the development of a method for measuring accessibility and the application of the 

method, based on constructing a GIS. The latter was highly complex, largely because of the 

lack of information on the provision of public services in the area, or its inaccuracy, and 

because there was no map of public transport networks, which had to be drawn up in order to 

carry out this survey. The result is a very powerful analytical tool, not only for the study 

presented in this paper but also for future territorial studies. 

The concept of accessibility has an interesting dual dimension, being both geographical 

and social. The present paper focuses on the former as an indirect measurement of the latter. 

In other words, the measurement of physical or geographical accessibility contributes to the 


64

Pitarch Garrido M.D. / European Journal of Geography 4 1 64-85 (2013) 

knowledge of whether public services are being provided adequately – equitably – to serve 

the whole population of the study territory irrespective of where people live. 

Many authors have published papers and studies, both theoretical and empirical, on the 

subject of accessibility. There are many different indicators of acceptability, mostly based on 

distance and user satisfaction. The main difficulty resides in the measurement process itself, 

more because of the quantity of data that need to be handled than because of the formulation 

of the indicators. The use of GIS has helped to make this task easier and, consequently, to 

expand the possibilities of present and future analyses. 

In the more advanced countries, the welfare state sees to providing the population with 

universal basic services. This has become an inalienable social right that guarantees equal 

opportunities for every group of citizens and reduces marginalisation and poverty by 

guaranteeing unpaid access to these services. New social demands have arisen that call for 

better quality services, including the need for them to be suitably located: this is considered 

one of the main conditions for their meeting the minimum requirements of both equity and 

efficient public investment. The dynamism of society, and all the more so in complex spaces 

with multiple living interrelations such as metropolitan areas, involves changes in the 

location of homes and workplaces, rises and falls in the populations of certain areas, etc. This 

also entails changes in access to services unless the services are adjusted, relocated or 

adapted to the changes so that the minimum threshold of equity is never lost. GIS makes it 

possible to carry out this analysis continuously by updating the information, making it a very 

powerful tool, as shown in this paper. 

Of the different types of service provided, this study centres on ones that a number of 

authors consider fixed (the user goes to the service) and with free universal access (Mérenne- 

Shoymaket, 1996; Calvo et al., 2001). These are public services that are required by the 

entirety of the potential demand and therefore need to be located in spaces with good access. 

It should also be pointed out that public services, together with community facilities and 

communication infrastructure, are currently one of the motors of local and regional 

development that make a clear contribution to territorial rebalancing and, consequently, to 

meeting social equality and equity criteria, fully justifying studies such as this which are of 

great practical use for decision-makers. 

The present study centres on a tangible, measurable aspect, accessibility based on public 

transport (city bus, metropolitan area bus, the underground/tram network and the local 

railway network), which has clear repercussions for social and territorial equity (based on the 

location of public service provision and of the population), with reference to a specific area, 

the metropolitan area of Valencia (Spain), which covers nearly 500 km 2 and has a population 

of over 1.8 million. These three factors give a closer view of local realities that may provide a 

useful example for the study of other similar urban areas, although this study is also of 

interest in itself, since an examination of territorial equity based on access to public services 

is one of the components of basic preliminary studies for local land use plans, which are still 

non-existent in many metropolitan settings. 

Accessibility is one of the possible measures of social sustainability, as mentioned above, 

but it is not the only one. The public transport network is not the only way to reach public 

services, either, nor are these all of the same type, nor do consumers all show the same 

behaviour. However, the combination of public services and public transport gives an initial 

picture of the degree of equity in the study area that can serve as a starting point for 

subsequent, more detailed studies. 


65


2. PUBLIC SERVICES AND SPATIAL EQUITY 

The subject of spatial equity and how to measure it through accessibility has seen little 

variation since the 1970s (Garner, 1971; Harvey, 1973; Domanski, 1979). The main research 

aim continues to be concerned with how to achieve greater spatial equity without necessarily 

sacrificing a degree of economic efficiency. Accessibility is a frequent basis for models and 

explanations that attempt to throw some light on the implications of the geographic location 

of public services. Different types of model have been proposed, ranging from highly 

centralised ones to others that favour extreme dispersion, and from the most theoretical to the 

extremely applied, but what almost all of them have in common is maximising the population 

served by government-backed public facilities, programmes or action. One way to achieve 

this objective is to improve their access by public transport. 

Harvey (1973) was one of the first geographers to define the term spatial equity, also 

known as spatial justice. Spatial justice must pursue the following aims: respond to the needs 

of people in each territory, assign resources to maximise spatial multiplier effects and assign 

extra resources to help overcome the problems that have their origin in the physical and 

social environment. Spatial justice depends on accessibility and on other factors such as 

supply quantity, the degree of availability of the services, etc. Both efficiency and spatial 

equity are particularly relevant for public services, as has been pointed out. 

The economic activity location models that have been developed since the 1950s, 

particularly those for public services, attempt to find an optimum location to achieve the 

maximum return on the supply. However, the reality is often far more complex than the 

models take into account. Political factors associated with local decision-making or with very 

different public priorities have created a network of public provision of the main welfare 

services (health, education and social services) that does not always respond to this optimum 

location. Traditionally, the standard measurement tool has been the ratio of variation of 

demand inputs (such as pupils per teacher, doctors per thousand inhabitants, etc.). However, 

this bears little relation to measurements of accessibility, which clearly contribute to 

measuring the efficiency and equity of the location of public services. The balance between 

two factors that roughly speaking can be called size and distance helps to define equity in 

access to the service and efficiency in its use, in that it can serve a particular demand. This 

subject is particularly relevant in urban and metropolitan areas with high population 

concentrations in particular spaces and considerable dispersal in others. 

Nowadays, studies are adopting a more practical bent as an aid to decision-making. The 

location of services already exists and is difficult to change, although it can always be 

improved. The best location for a service does not always entail moving it: on occasion, as 

already mentioned, better access would be the answer. Improving the transport network 

and/or setting up new networks is essential nowadays to integrate and organise urban and 

metropolitan areas, where the spread and complexity of urban development are inevitable. 

What is known as smart urban growth takes sustainability as the basis for urban planning, but 

its bias towards managing growth and environmental aspects would seem to sideline 

somewhat the problems of social equity (Foster-Bey, 2002). 

Accessibility is a basic geographical concept. Equitable accessibility is a complex matter 

(Crooks and Andrews, 2009). It is related to many questions such as decisions about 

assigning resources, the location of the service or activity, information, or even the quality of 

the service. In short, it means how "easily" a user can obtain the service that he or she needs. 

For this, physical accessibility is important but so is its measurement in terms of time, since 

as Miralles (2011) pointed out, the social times (mobility times) of the city "draw the 

everyday spaces of the metropolitan regions" (p. 127). Travelling time contributes 

enormously to the citizens' view of the quality of the public services provided and, therefore, 


66


the quality of their everyday life. Time is a measurement that relates activities to places (May 

and Thrift, 2001; Davovidi, 2009). This refers to social time, which brings together a spatial 

variable, related to the location of the activities in the territory, and a time variable, the result 

of the time spent on everyday activities, including journeys. The social use of time is, 

therefore, closely related to the use of the city and of the metropolitan space. The physical 

makeup of this space and of the infrastructure supporting mobility strongly influences every 

type of territorial dynamics and makes a powerful contribution to defining the quality of life 

of its citizens (Mückenberg, 2009; Miralles, 2011). Proximity is an increasingly valued aspect 

of a territory's quality and of social welfare. 

Moreover, one of the problems most frequently studied and condemned by social 

scientists in many countries is that the social structure of cities and, particularly, of 

metropolitan areas, is undergoing major changes that are not being paid the attention they 

deserve. In Spain, for instance, urban planning is based almost exclusively on reference to the 

land, its ownership and its price, obliging the citizens to adapt to the city rather than the other 

way round, which is what should happen. Spanish urban planning has an effect on social 

cohesion or disintegration (Bueno Abad and Pérez Cosín, 2008). 

It is true that much progress has been made on the subject of the impact of accessibility 

on the equitable provision of services, but the question of optimum travelling distances is still 

not clear. Schuurman et al. (2010) suggest that the term 'optimum' is best used when 

comparing methods rather than for seeking or modifying spatial accessibility. The key lies in 

the process of interpreting the results so that they will be useful in a possible political 

decision-making process. 

3. SUSTAINABILITY AND EQUITY IN METROPOLITAN AREAS 

Metropolitan areas are complex spaces in which interactions between the different territorial 

processes that take place in them are both the cause and the consequence of how they are 

organized, how they have evolved, and where infrastructure, services, residential spaces, 

industrial spaces, etc. are located. Metropolitan areas are becoming especially relevant 

because they are territories that have traditionally been made up of a central city and its 

hinterland but are now organised in a complex way, with multiple peripheral situations and 

new centres within the periphery which are fostered by mobility and not always by proximity 

to the centre (Corral, 1994). 

Metropolitan areas in Europe have seen enormous growth over the past five years, as 

have urban areas in general, leading the European Union to develop various policies to help 

manage the different problems found in them. The Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European 

Cities adopted by the European ministers recommends that Member States pay particular 

attention to the growth and planning of urban spaces from an integrated and sustainable 

perspective, particularly in the most deprived neighbourhoods. In the EU's recent cohesion 

policy (the 2007-2013 plan) the urban dimension has been brought fully into the programmes 

and projects co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), meaning that 

integral development was set in motion in these areas, both horizontally and vertically, with 

greater responsibilities and investments devolved to the local level in response to the growing 

complexity of these territories (European Commission, 2009). 

In Spain, a pronounced decentralisation process is taking place within the metropolitan 

areas but the cities at their centre are not losing their influence. The population shift from the 

central areas to the metropolitan rings has also joined that from the most populated and 

densest nuclei to medium-sized and smaller ones, generally with a low population density 

(Nel.lo, 2001). The structure of metropolitan space is closely linked to transport 

infrastructure, which is both the consequence of and a contributor to the suburbanisaton 


67


process and to a shift from monocentric to polycentric structures in the internal organisation 

of the transport infrastructure itself. This is due to changes in the basic patterns of 

accessibility, which also explains the strength of the demand for journeys and their modal 

distribution (Schwanen, Dieleman and Dijst, 2001; Albertos et al., 2007; Gutiérrez and 

García, 2007; García, 2010). 

All this tells us that, at the very least, spatial equity has varied over the course of this 

process. The changes in accessibility induced by new road infrastructure, cause and 

consequence of the suburbanisation process, create new inequalities for the population in 

both the old and the new areas of development. 

Public services are not equally accessible everywhere, in other words, space introduces 

some forms of exclusion. In their complexity, metropolitan areas present imbalances that can, 

on occasion, be particularly striking. In an attempt to reduce these exclusions to as few 

situations as possible and achieve a fairer spatial distribution, some localisation models have 

been developed with criteria such as public utility (the number of people who use the service) 

or travel costs. 

The latter notion is the basis of the nodal or functional region concept and is also 

fundamental for mobility models and to explain the spacing of certain activities. Whatever 

the activity, but particularly if it involves services to the population, its area of influence 

extends beyond the exact spot where it is located. Since these centres are spatially at a 

distance and their services are mainly provided face to face – in other words, the user has to 

travel to the place where the service is located – connections between them are essential and 

one of the basic premises for studying them is to consider them nodes or focal points of the 

transport network. 

The quest for social equity, together with territorial equity in metropolitan areas, is key to 

achieving sustainable territories, with all what that implies in terms of improving the 

inhabitants' quality of life. From this perspective, the current economic climate (which 

involves greater competition between territories and less availability of public resources) 

entails, among other things, a greater need to manage local resources efficiently, to lead the 

shared effort of local bodies and organisations to pursue more sustainable development and to 

introduce innovative management models that will make it possible to improve the quality of 

life of the population. Decision-makers must increasingly have strategies to make local 

government policies easier for industry, the unions and the public in their areas to understand. 

The EU has therefore been using different strategies to strengthen this aspect, such as the EU 

Territorial Agenda or the EESC Opinion on European metropolitan areas (OJEU C 168/10, 

20.7.2007). 

4. METHOD: THE SPATIAL SEPARATION INDEX 

In this accessibility analysis the first data obtained were the distances between the basic 

territorial unit for which census information is available, the census tract (taking its built-up 

centre as the starting point for any journey), and the exact point where the facilities of each of 

the three types of basic service considered in this study are located. The distances were 

calculated in time (minutes), as this is this measurement that determines user satisfaction and 

gives a better comparison of the efficiency of each of the possible public transport modes. 

The three types of service considered were health care, education and social services. Within 

the first type, a distinction was made between hospitals and health centres; within the second 

type the distinction was between primary and secondary schools; of the social services, only 

the basic ones were considered. In every case strictly private facilities were excluded and 

only public and subsidised services were taken into account. 


68


The model employed involves calculating urban mobility over the networks on which it 

takes place, in other words, the aim is as real a model as possible. To achieve this, 

TRANSCAD 6.0 transportation GIS software was used. Three types of transport or mobility 

networks were studied: the pedestrian network (it will always be necessary to make at least 

part of the journey on foot), the city bus and metropolitan bus network, the underground/tram 

network and local trains. In all cases, the transport service frequencies and their operating 

speeds were considered for all the different lines. In this way it was possible for the distance 

calculations to include the time taken to get to the public transport, wait for it and change 

between transport modes as well as the actual travelling time. In other words, the journey 

time calculation is door-to-door, from the centroid of the census tract to the exact location of 

the service in question. 

Out of the wide range of existing indices (Garrocho y Campos, 2006; Bhat et al. 2000), 

the Spatial Separation Index was chosen. This calculates the mean distance in minutes 

between two points. It is simple and easy to interpret. In this type of index, all the starting 

points carry the same weighting in the calculations and the index only reflects the data on 

distances. Because it is so simple, it can be used to compare different situations (such as 

access to public and to private services or to different classes of service) clearly and 

efficiently. Complexity was introduced by using the real, verified times of the real mobility 

network, making these results very reliable. 

Accordingly, the Spatial Separation Index (Índice de Separacion Espacial) for spatial unit 

i (ISE i ) is: 

where 

i is the basic spatial unit (census tract) for which the index is calculated, which is taken 

as the possible starting point for a journey 

j is each of the possible journey destinations (the services) 

D ij is the distance in minutes between the starting point i and the destination j, based on 

the matrices calculated and 

n is the number of possible destinations. 

The calculation only took into account the basic public service nearest to the census tract 

where the population lives. This analysis therefore assumes that the citizen will travel to the 

public service closest to his or her home. 

5. THE METROPOLITAN AREA OF VALENCIA 

The case analysed here is the Metropolitan Area of Valencia (MAV), on the east coast of 

Spain, south of Barcelona and east of Madrid (Map 1). Industry and the service sector 

predominate in this area, which has good communications. It is part of the Autonomous 

Region of Valencia, the fourth most-populated in Spain, with 5,011,548 inhabitants at 1 

January 2012. The region's main cities are Valencia, Alicante and Castellón, but only 

Valencia has a true metropolitan area, the largest in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona, which 

accounts for 37% of the population of the region and 75% of that of its province. 

The MAV revolves around a central city, Valencia (population 798,033 in 2011), and 75 

municipalities with slightly over one million inhabitants within a radius of almost 40 

kilometres, taking the total to 1,862,053 inhabitants. It is a complex area in terms of the 

dispersion of its population and built-up areas. Over the 2001/20011 period its population 


69


increased by 261,255. Since the city of Valencia only grew by slightly over 50,000 

inhabitants over the decade, a real mean annual growth rate of under 1% and less than the 

1.67% of the metropolitan area as a whole, this growth mainly took place in medium-sized 

settlements and, to a lesser extent, in the larger centres with better communications (Torrent, 

Sagunto, Paterna, Mislata, etc.). 

Map 1. Location of the study area 

In the past twenty years the MAV has undergone a major urbanisation process that has 

increased the density of both its built space and its population (Table 1). At the same time, 

new communications infrastructure has been put in place, particularly the building of the 

underground and the extension of bus lines within already urbanised spaces and to the newly 

built-up areas (Map 3). The expansion of the road network for private vehicles has been 

fundamental for the spread of an extensive urban development model based on family houses 

strongly linked to open natural spaces, not forgetting the development of inner city spaces 

and expansion of their edges through the mushrooming of comprehensive action plans (Plan 

de Acción Integrada – PAI), used as a way to modify the general town plan (Plan General de 

Ordenación Urbana – PGOU) and reclassify agricultural land as urban or building land. 

Although it is also a result of space infilling, the combination of three factors as both cause 

and, in turn, consequence, namely demographic growth, expansive urbanisation and the 

building of a wider network of communications infrastructure, explains the consolidation of a 

metropolitan structure in which the zone that is furthest away from the central city is 

precisely the one that has seen the greatest increase in population density, indicating a 

relatively greater population growth and urban development expansion towards the periphery, 

which offers advantages like lower land prices and closeness to natural spaces (Graph 1). 


70


Scope 

Map 2. Metropolitan rings according to distance from the centre of Valencia city 

Table 1. Population and density by metropolitan ring 

Distance from 

Valencia 

Surface area 

(km 2 ) 

Population 

density 1996 

(inhabs/km 2 ) 

Population 

density 2000 


Population 

density 2011 


Valencia 0 134.63 5546.19 5489.22 5927.60 

First ring 1-15 km 456.42 1250.91 1293.72 1591.14 

Second ring 15.1-30 km 1317.71 168.95 176.72 235.54 

Third ring >30 km 277 67.84 69.90 98.98 

Total MAV - 2185.8 714.24 723.86 851.89 

Source: Own elaboration 


Graph 1. Evolution of population density by metropolitan ring 


71


This territorial restructuring has not always been accompanied by an improvement in the 

provision of public services and facilities, particularly as regards public transport and the 

services in greatest demand: health, education and social services. The urban expansion has 

therefore generated considerable private mobility, compounded by the proliferation of 

shopping and leisure centres on the periphery of the MAV in recent decades. The public 

transport network is particularly dense in the central area and the first ring, but sparse or nonexistent 

in the second and third metropolitan rings. These are precisely where the most 

intense growth is taking place, as mentioned above, and since the public transport network 

and public services tend to be located in the central zones, the outer rings are also where the 

greatest inequalities in access to these services are found. The result is considerable private 

mobility, with the sustainability problems it entails, or growing inequalities in access to 

services which are accentuated in particular population groups such as old and young people, 

who have more limited access to private transport. The problems of spatial equity are real and 

a complex territory such as the MAV is an interesting laboratory for testing some of the ways 

of measuring the imbalances and inequities introduced by the space and its characteristics. 

6. EQUITY IN ACCESS TO PUBLIC SERVICES BY PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN THE 

VALENCIA METROPOLITAN AREA 

6.1. Overall Results 

Calculating the index of accessibility by public transport in the MAV has produced some 

interesting results. Although public transport is not the most efficient in terms of journey 

time, what is of interest is its public nature, which in principle makes it accessible to the 

entire population and enables the equity of a territory to be measured. Generally speaking, 

because the provision of transport in the metropolitan core and first ring is greater than in the 

periphery, the further away from the central city the longer the travel time by public 

transport. The MAV shows a two way process: on the one hand decentralisation of activities 

and residence, and with them the provision of services, and on the other hand, intensification 

of the most immediately local space in the main city and town centres. 

The Spatial Separation Index calculated in this study showed significant differences by 

type of service (Table 2). The best access was clearly to primary schools (mean ISE = 7.12), 

as this is a lower (and therefore better) value than those for the social services (mean ISE = 

13.85) and primary health care (mean ISE = 13.88), always bearing in mind that these figures 

refer to public not private services reached by public transport alone. For comparison, the 

same index was calculated for private transport. The journey times were better in every case 

and very significantly so in the case of hospital accessibility (ISE = 10.38). As this is a more 

specialised level of health care, hospitals are fewer in number and dispersed over the area, so 

those living in the most distant zones have a longer journey time if they use public transport 

because they need to change buses or trains, involving waiting times which the use of private 

transport avoids. 

The services that were most evenly and equitably distributed over the metropolitan area 

in relation to the population were primary schools (some of which are also secondary 

schools). They form a dense network in which closeness to the demand is a priority and 

constitute the nucleus of service provision. The fact that a large number of them are 

subsidised rather than exclusively public explains their dispersion over the territory and the 

very low mean journey times. The same is true of secondary schools, which also present low 

journey times. Social services and health centres were in an intermediate position, with good 

territorial distribution, in keeping with the fact of their often being neighbourhood services. 

Also, in the case of the social services, political initiatives by many town halls have been 


72


decisive in improving their spatial distribution. Lastly, as is only natural, the worst 

accessibility is to public hospitals, of which the MAV has nine. 

Map 3. Public transport network in the MAV 

EMT: city buses; Renfe-Cercanías: local trains; Metrovalencia: underground/trams; 

Metrobus: Metropolitan area buses 

Service 

Table 2. Spatial Separation Index for the Valencia Metropolitan Area 

Mean ISE in minutes 

Public 

transport 

(simple) 

Private 

transport 

Mean ISE 

(weighted by population) 

Public transport 

Private 

transport 

Number of 

centres 

provided 

Hospitals 34.80 10.38 37.14 11.02 9 

Health Centres 13.88 4.34 14.65 4.55 77 

Basic social 

services 

Primary schools 

(public and 

subsidised) 

Secondary 

schools (public 

and subsidised) 

13.85 4.08 14.21 4.17 98 

7.12 2.77 7.62 2.92 447 

9.94 3.40 10.65 3.60 263 


The above analysis was complemented by considering the population involved (Tables 3 

and 4). The health and social services present asymmetrical distribution. In these two cases 

the highest percentage of the metropolitan population has middling accessibility (between 10 


73


and 30 minutes), whereas for education services the highest percentage of the population is 

under 10 minutes away from a school. 

The social service provision is slightly worse than for health centres, as 31.4% of the 

metropolitan population is between 5 and 10 minutes away from the nearest health centre, 

whereas 24.8% of the population has a similar journey time to reach the closest social 

services (Graph 2). 

In view of these accessibility indicators, it is evident that public and subsidised schools 

are services with good accessibility for the highest percentages of the metropolitan 

population, whereas the situation of the health care and social services presents more 

problems, in principle. Nevertheless, generally speaking the provision of services in the 

MAV can be considered good, as most of the population residing in the area can reach a 

public service by public transport in under 30 minutes. Evidently, any improvements in 

accessibility should address transport to hospitals and bringing basic services closer to the 

population, in other words, expanding them in the most isolated and disadvantaged zones, as 

will be discussed here below. 

Table 3. MAV population by journey time to services (vertical percentages) 

Hospitals 

Health 

Centres 

Social 

services 

Primary 

schools 

Secondary 

schools 

Total 

Population 

under 5 

minutes 

away 

Population 

5-10 

minutes 

away 

Population 

10-20 

minutes 

away 

Population 

20-30 

minutes 

away 

Population 

30-45 

minutes 

away 

Population 

45-60 

minutes 

away 

Population 

over 60 

minutes 

away 

1.02 3.94 19.81 42.35 62.18 61.41 69.80 

13.05 24.88 29.52 14.78 11.95 14.91 9.65 

12.69 19.71 33.15 24.27 11.07 7.43 7.69 

45.13 21.31 5.96 7.30 6.07 7.15 5.20 

28.11 30.17 11.56 11.31 8.74 9.09 7.66 

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 


Table 4. MAV population by journey time to services (horizontal percentages) 

Hospitals 

Health Centres 

Social services 

Primary schools 

Secondary 

schools 

Population 

under 5 

minutes 

away 

Population 

5-10 

minutes 

away 

Population 

10-20 

minutes 

away 

Population 

20-30 

minutes 

away 

Population 

30-45 

minutes 

away 

Population 

45-60 

minutes 

away 

Population 

over 60 

minutes 

away 

Total 

1.30 4.97 23.75 20.95 23.98 10.94 14.12 100 

16.68 31.41 35.38 7.31 4.61 2.65 1.95 100 

16.22 24.88 39.74 12.00 4.27 1.32 1.55 100 

57.67 26.90 7.15 3.61 2.34 1.27 1.05 100 

35.93 38.08 13.86 5.60 3.37 1.62 1.55 100 


74 

European Journal of Geography - ISSN 1792-1341 © All rights reserved


Graph 1 to 3 

75 




Graph 4 to 5 

6.2. Areas of Influence of the Public Services 

In terms of territorial variations in the accessibility of the public services studied, the five 

maps based on the Spatial Separation Index (ISE) calculations (Map 4) make it possible to 

draw two fundamental conclusions. Firstly, in general there is a centre-periphery type spatial 

pattern in which the accessibility levels are highest at the centre of the metropolitan area and 

decrease in concentric rings towards the periphery. This arrangement is particularly clear-cut 

in the case of the ISE values for health and education services, although the latter seem to 

combine the concentric rings with radial structures that coincide with the main routes (public 

and private) towards the north-west and west, matching the MAV's main areas of urban 

growth. The concentration of service provision in the larger population centres is explained 

not only by the generic location of the facilities (greater density in the central areas) but also 

by the greater quality (frequency and density of routes) of their public transport, particularly 

in the city of Valencia. 

Secondly, the metropolitan space is not homogenous, particularly on its periphery. It is 

not homogeneous either from the urban development point of view or from that of 

accessibility. Accessibility does not diminish in the same way or at the same rate in every 

direction. This can be seen on some of the maps of ISE values, particularly the one for social 

76


services. Two axes of high accessibility are clearly visible there: a north-west axis and a north 

axis, which converge on the urban nucleus of the city of Valencia. This part of the MAV 

contains the spaces with the greatest access to public services and therefore, presumably, the 

greatest potential wellbeing; in short, better conditions for sustainability and equity. These 

spaces are favoured by both a denser provision of public facilities and public transport of 

greater quality. 

Map 4.Time in minutes (ISE) to the nearest hospital 

6.3. Spaces of Inequality: Privileged Zones and Problem Territories 

The method applied makes it possible to detect the zones with the best and worst access to 

public services within the area studied. In general, as was to be expected, the centres of the 

different urban areas, particularly the city of Valencia, showed higher accessibility values for 

all types of services. The first element that needs to be taken into account is access to the 

public transport network itself, as the zones with a worse transport service will also present a 

worse accessibility indicator for the other types of service (ISE). 

In peripheral census tracts or neighbourhoods or in ones with a scattered population the 

opposite is the case: poor accessibility, a general lack of public service provision nearby and 

on occasion even a lack of public transport. The less advantaged zones from the point of view 

of accessibility respond to two socio-territorial models. One is census tracts in high-income 

districts, in other words, suburbs with a structure of family houses at a distance from urban 

centres where the predominant means of transport is private vehicles. The other is census 

tracts in run-down, low-income neighbourhoods. Some are on the periphery of the 

metropolitan area but others are close to the centre. 


77


Map 5. Time in minutes (ISE) to the nearest health centre 

Map 6. Time in minutes (ISE) to the nearest basic social services centre 

78 



Map 7. Time in minutes (ISE) to the nearest public or subsidised primary school 

Map 8. Time in minutes (ISE) to the nearest public or subsidised secondary school 

79 



In the first of these types, access by public transport is not a priority as owing to the high 

income of the inhabitants it is assumed that private vehicles will be used most, although that 

is not sufficient reason to justify a total lack of access to the public transport network. About 

100,000 inhabitants of the MAV are in this situation. Reasons of sustainability, energy 

efficiency and safety clearly justify an adequate service for these zones, all the more so since 

their residents are known to be more mobile than average. The reason is that as these districts 

are mainly residential, their inhabitants' places of work are normally at a distance that 

requires the use of some form of transport. Another reason for their greater tendency to daily 

mobility is that both the services studied here and those related with shopping and leisure are 

also located some way away. 

Census tracts without any type of public transport at a distance from the centre, in 

peripheral municipalities without access to the public transport network, account for a small 

proportion of the metropolitan area's population. The fact that most of the services are located 

in their population centre makes it unnecessary to travel elsewhere, except in some cases such 

as going to a hospital, which requires a journey as these are centrally located. In that event 

this 27,000-strong population needs to use private transport, which can be a problem for 

many, such as old people who do not own a vehicle. 

Lastly, census tracts without public transport in urban areas are found in socially and 

territorially peripheral neighbourhoods. The population of the zones in this situation is 

slightly over 200,000, making this the most populous group of the three. Almost 20% of them 

live in the main city, Valencia, and over 30% in large towns or cities: Torrent, Sagunt, 

Mislata and Manises. As these are urban census tracts it is not impossible for their inhabitants 

to access the public transport network, although it is further away than in other 

neighbourhoods or tracts. Their isolation is considerable but not total (Map 9). 

On combining the ISE results for the different public services with the existence or 

otherwise of a public transport network nearby, very different results appear for the different 

census tracts. Even within the same municipality the situation can be very heterogeneous. 

The accessibility of public services is better the closer the census tract is to a major urban 

centre and worse, generally, in the second metropolitan ring, which is more rural and further 

away from the city of Valencia and other cities and towns in the MAV. 

However, some census tracts in the main cities and towns present a similar situation to 

that of the rural areas, despite their urban setting. They are usually but not always at a 

distance from the centre, have no public transport services or very unreliable ones and no 

provision of the type of public service in question. Using different criteria, it is possible to 

establish levels of inequality or scarcity for the different types of service. Schools are the 

service with the best distribution over the area, so very few of the population are affected 

(Table 6), while poor access to health services, particularly hospitals, causes problems for a 

higher percentage of the population. In the case of hospitals, 10% of the inhabitants of the 

MAV have to travel for over 30 minutes by public transport and for 3% the journey takes 

over an hour. 


80


Map 9. Census tracts with no public transport stop 

Table 5. Number of people in the MAV with poor public transport access to public services 

Over 30 

minutes 

away 

Over 60 

minutes 

away 

Hospitals 

Health 

Centres 

Social 

services 

Primary 

schools 

Secondary 

schools 

198,830 29,017 22,882 17,407 27,228 

59,904 13,192 8,386 9,117 13,192 

Locating the population that is affected by a greater scarcity of both public transport and 

public services is essential in order to identify where to invest in improving their provision 

and building new facilities. Although the overall figures for the MAV are not unfavourable, 

attention needs to be paid to zones which are no less important than others despite only 

accounting for a small proportion of the total population (Table 6). It is possible to identify 

the census tracts with the worst results for all the services studied. 


81


Table 6. Impact of the accessibility by public transport of all the public services 

Over 60 minutes from ALL the public 

services 

Over 30 minutes from ALL the public 

services 

Under 30 minutes from ALL the public 

services 

Under 15 minutes from ALL the public 

services 

Number of 

census tracts 

Population 

% of total MAV 

population 

10 16,934 0.8 

40 69,206 3.6 

588 909,759 48.2 

137 180,086 9.5 

It is useful to identify the worst-served census tracts, but also to find out which districts 

are best-positioned for access to the public service network, in other words, the location of 

equity. The worst-situated zones are, as mentioned, those that do not have a nearby public 

transport stop either, but they are not the only ones. Some census tracts are so large that the 

public transport network access point is at some distance from where part of the population 

lives. 

In short, based on the accessibility indicator employed, equity is fairly adequate in the 

MAV. However, the best-served districts are those of the city of Valencia. Most census tracts 

that are less than 15 minutes away from all the services are in the central city or in 

municipalities that form part of its conurbation, although they only account for 9.5% of the 

population of the metropolitan area. The data are even more positive for journey times of 30 

minutes at most. Over half the population is less than half an hour away from all the public 

services. 

The worst situation is found in the municipalities on the periphery. The ten census tracts 

that are over an hour away from all the services belong to municipalities that are not part of 

the Valencia conurbation, are all at a distance from the urban centre of their own municipality 

and are of the dispersed habitat type, at times combined with weekend homes. The population 

in this situation comprises under 1% of the total inhabitants of the MAV. It is no less 

important for that, and at least as regards basic services (primary schools and health centres) 

its situation should be improved considerably. Quantitatively, the population that lives over 

30 minutes from all services is larger. It makes up less than 4% of the total and also 

corresponds to dispersed habitat areas. The city of Valencia barely figures in this group, but 

the largest municipalities in the first metropolitan ring do. These are census tracts with low 

population densities at a distance from the town centre, where private transport predominates, 

as does the use of private services, in consonance with their income levels. 

The differences by type of service are also interesting and noteworthy. The situations 

mentioned above are the extremes, the cases of best and worst accessibility of all the services. 

However, situations where there is adequate access to one service but not to the others 

abound and the combinations are very varied. Half the population is to be found in this 

somewhat unbalanced position, particularly as regards basic health care and social services. 

7. CONCLUSION: SOCIAL EQUITY WITHIN THE TERRITORY. A 

MEASUREMENT OF INEQUALITY 

The method explained and applied in this article shows considerable potential. The most 

laborious aspect of it is undoubtedly drawing up a GIS that includes the necessary 

information on the different territorial entities and elements. The basis is the location of the 

services and the structure of the transport network. This is completed with the most detailed 

82 



demographic, social and economic information possible regarding the territory. Sociodemographic 

information is available in Spain at census tract level, considered the smallest 

territorial unit that does not breach statistical confidentiality. If this information were 

available at street block or, even better, housing level, it would bring a substantial qualitative 

improvement in the results of the model. 

At all events, measuring equity through access to the education, health and social services 

by public transport provides very reliable results even when the exact location of the demand 

(the population) is not available. This is compensated for to a certain extent by the correct 

location of the centre offering the service. The indicator of real-time accessibility is 

extraordinary suitable for drawing closer to the real situation in a complex territory such as a 

metropolitan area, making it possible to arrive at conclusions that could not have been 

reached with a less precise method. 

Once the various ISE limits have been established, the different zones and municipalities 

can be classified according to their greater or lesser equity. Setting these limits is an 

important aspect for public policy-making at municipal level or, more appropriately, at 

metropolitan level. In the case under study, the authorities can take action in two ways: they 

can provide or relocate the centres that offer these services and they can act on the public 

transport network. Optimising the former and expanding the latter so that it reaches most of 

the territory would bring a considerable improvement in the area's equity. In the case of the 

MAV the provision of public services is broad and varied, with only a few exceptions, and 

extending the public transport network would improve the journey times. 

Evidently, the structure of the public transport network determines the results regarding 

equity, but that is the whole point. A more detailed analysis of the demand would highlight 

the worst-affected social groups, generally children, young people and old people, the main 

users not only of public transport but also of the most important services. Consequently, a 

study of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the neighbourhoods with the 

worst levels of equity would give a deeper insight into the real impact of the worst 

accessibility on particular population groups. 

In short, this method holds out many and varied possibilities for the future. One of the 

most interesting vistas it opens up is the ability to run simulations to measure the 

consequences of new locations or closures, which is highly relevant in the current economic 

climate. The prospect of closing some centres may not necessarily be negative if the service 

is not reduced and is located efficiently and, above all, if territorial equity is borne in mind: it 

may even be improved. 

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