Second homes and residential tourism like generating of urbaization and new territorial imbalances in Cantabria

Abstract

The purpose of this analysis, which is part of a much broader project, is to contribute to better understanding of the current processes of urban sprawl and the territorial effects which is inducing the spread of second homes. The study was done from observation of a particular case, the Cantabrian Autonomous Community, which has great similarities with the general pattern, but also quite a few distinctive features. A hurried process of expansion and dispersion of second homes is taking place in the Cantabrian Region; this process is causing an important real estate-residential phenomenon. The objective of my analysis and reflection is to show the territorial changes that are taking place so much in the coastal regions, where the phenomenon has happened before and with more intensity, like in the mountainous heartland areas, where the process is more recent and less aggressive. Qualitative inequalities are superposed to the quantitative differences and it is obligatory to stand out as much that significant specificities, new resistances and imbalances exist on regional as local scale, in spite of the common characteristics of many of the dynamic ones that affect these territories.