From an Isolated and Suburban University Campus to a Metropolitan Pole of Knowledge: The Case of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Abstract

Universities are, among many other things, a territorial element: they can vary in form –ranging from the most compact to the most fragmented– and location –from the most central to the most suburban–. In the 1970s three campus universities were inaugurated in Spain –Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona–, which coincided with a deficient perception of the metropolitan areas where they were sited. They were isolated and became university enclaves that were disconnected from their immediate surroundings as a result of functionalist urban planning, a lack of infrastructures and pluri-municipal planning; and not forgetting a certain degree of vested political interest. The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona was located on the periphery of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, but as time passed it became a metropolitan point of reference with leadership potential and a high degree of synergy with its surrounding areas. This is analysed from economic and territorial knowledge. These are territories with varying geographical features and changing limits within a metropolitan reality that has adopted urban models in the form of a network.