Urban Peripheries and the Restructuring of Spanish Urban Policies

The article analyzes the evolution of Spanish urban peripheries over the last three decades. New Urban Policy, as one of the key mechanisms of the entrepreneurial governance, has dramatically influenced cities socio-spatial structure and, particularly, urban peripheries. They received a priority attention in the first stage of the recovered Spanish local democracy, but urban peripheries moved soon into a secondary role of the urban agendas, making way to other urban interventions focused on rein-forcing city competittion. Peripheries analysis shows significant housing deprivation and exclusion problems, but at this moment they are not equivalent to the American ghettos. In any case, the need for public sector intervention in urban peripheries is in a context of crisis even higher.