Melted wool, woven snow: industrial decline and new urban policies in Béjar (Salamanca)

Abstract

New urban policies pretend to manage cities as a sort of territorial corporation that must become competitive in the global economy. Economic growth as priority, entrepreneurial city as strategy and networked governance as method are the three main features of this urban management approach which has been mostly developed in large industrial cities since the mid 1980s. This article discusses its suitability as a theoretical framework to conceptualize the reaction of small industrial towns against industrial decline, with a closer examination of the influence of urban size and geographical context on the real practice of these new policies. A case study of Béjar (Salamanca), a 15,000 population town that strives to make a living from tourism after the breaking up of its textile industrial district, is presented to identify both the opportunities and the limits of the new urban policies in the lowest level of the urban system.