Students: Michèle Ziegler, Gérard Lerner
Location: Group work in Canary-Islands
Date: February, 2006
Type: Research project, student work

Las Palmas is the largest city of the islands, with a strong structure related to commercial activities, administration, industries and also tourism. The port area is undergoing a rapid transformation in its infrastructures and organisation, with a new role for the metropolitan area of the capital. These transformations are also connected to the changes of the whole isthmus, pressured by the recent immigration fluxes and the re-organisation of the touristic facilities for the urban beach of Las Canteras. At the same time, the metropolitan area of Las Palmas is facing a set of transformation processes that mutate the role of the smaller centres on the hills (Arucas, Tafira, etc.) in the north of the island, and that of the strip of land along the motorway to the airport. How is Las Palmas re-organising its territory? What is happening at its margins? What demographic structure is in place? What are the major projects? What models of agency is it prefiguring? What are the differences between the Canarian capital and other major cities on the Iberian peninsula that are strongly reorganising their urban infrastructures?