The second project was listed at the height of 1900. However, before you saw the company decided to move within the limits of 1898. It was due to the pressure of the planes included that you do not need excessive competition or because the company does not need to be disgregated in excess. urbanizadora capacity, the certainty is that triunfó el límite más corto. Pero el dictamen de Obras Públicas, que desde Madrid controlaba allos planes, invalidó la iniciativa. For a young person, order to set the limits more amply and, for other reasons, that you have to have a public competition so that it is legal. From this point on, the backs of Epalza's planes will not pass through the paper. Of all the forms Epalza dio un dato important. In 1897 the population lived at 74,000 inhabitants, which was estimated by Alzola in 1924, although it was never possible to build the city.
The surface area occupied by the new plan is 76 hectares, which sums up to 158 of Alzola's plan arrojaban la cifra de 234 Ha, cerca de lo calculado por Amado de Lázaro. In 1903 the competition was called. In this case, the team was trained by Pedro Guimón and Ricardo Bastida, with Federico Ugalde. The planes are radically different from their plants. Ugalde focused on the manzana circled and designed your project from the definition pormenorizada del aprovechamiento, intentando sacar the máximo de partido en este point. Guimón y Bastida is part of the need to establish a good circulatory pattern and adapt the shape of the manzanas to the irregularities of the earth along the radial lines. As a result, the building was felt and the urban planning was minor. If well the jurado del concurso dio the premio a Guimón y Bastida, the Pleno Municipal changed and fell and ended by quedarse with the plan of Ugalde. However, it has been demonstrated that if you receive the help of the School of Architecture, you know the circulatory theories of German urbanism and deal with the idea of the use of it, that you convert it into one of the regulations of the market and you do not learn to consider the problems that you have. generate the construction of the city in these terms.
The Ugalde plan came into force, but did not resolve the problem of the slowness of its construction. In the decade of 1920, although a few years after the expansion competition, the building was built only before the Elíptica Square. The segment of the Plan of 1876 and the total surface area of the extension of 1904 to the cargo ship of Ugalde was a landscape of descampados and huertas. You have never seen the introduction of a large bag of shoes in the offer, nor have you handled the construction of the handle, nor have you bought the price of your shoes. However, in Bilbao there is more intensity than the debate on the need to expand the municipal terminal and be regulated only for urbanization at all length of the river. The consideration of Bilbao county of San Antón hasta el Abra is defined and converted into a political option in the fight the capital and the anteiglesias of its surroundings. If republicans and socialists pursue a policy of annexations, the nationalists and their supporters maintain as a priority the conservation of legal independence and the personality of the affected refugees. Many groups thought about the need to reflect on regional terms. Era a hecho that the future Bilbao needs to be extended by its ría and approved as a vertebrador element. However, we do not have to worry about the method of annexations that constitute the formation of a community of independent municipalities.
In this context, the Diputación, which directly opposed the annexations, sent to Ricardo Bastida a "Plan of entanglements of Bilbao with the surrounding villages". Bastida era municipal architect in the section of Civil Construction, but in material of urbanism has conseguido a considerable prestige. In addition, it was the daba lo mismo that used the annexation or the communication, where it converted it into a valid consultant for the bandos. Su Plan de Enlaces was a form encubierta de Plan Comarcal.
Based on the powers of the Provincial Council in matters of roads and starting from the basis that what was essential for him was the definition of a circulatory skeleton that would allow for a future sustainable and governable urban development, he could transcend the controversy of the jurisdictions. But not everything was limited to a road plan. Bastida proposed for the first time in a graphic document the assignment of uses by zones or zoning. That is, he distinguished areas more appropriate for industrial use, for residential use or for recreation. Naturally, the legal in force at that time, the Special Law of Expansion of 1892, did not allow zoning because imposing a certain use on an owner meant cutting back on the content of the right of ownership. Legally, the uses could not be defined from the plan. It could be indicated where buildings would be built and where not. But from there to deciding without consulting the owner of that land what was going to be built there, whether houses or industrial warehouses or parks, was a world apart. Liberal property rights in the nineteenth century were too strong to tolerate cuts.
Bastida knew, especially after attending the 1921 London Town Planning Congress, that as long as a new town planning law was not enacted, the established zoning would be a dead letter. Nevertheless, his idea was magnificent. The fact that he knew how to rely on the Provincial Council's competence in matters of roads to cover up an urban development plan, the clarity of his regional vision, and the reasonableness of the zoning he proposed, made his plan, presented in 1923, an essential reference for the future Bilbao. In addition, it definitively introduced access to the Asúa valley as a reserve of land for the future metropolitan Bilbao. Although this idea was not new, it was the first time that it was formalised in a graphic document as a real possibility. With the annexation of Deusto, Begoña and part of Erandio in 1925, the controversy ended. The Bilbao City Council could call for a competition without having to depend on the Provincial Council. However, Bastida's plan was respected and was included in the prior information given to the participants as a reference for territorial planning that they had to take into account. In this way, it managed to maintain a certain validity.
But urban expansion was not the only concern for urban planning. Since the enactment of the Law on the Reform and Sanitation of Large Towns in 1895, the possibility of acting on the Old Towns by opening large arteries by demolishing buildings to widen the streets had become a fairly attractive business in some cities. In Bilbao there had already been some proposals, but the most important was the one presented by Secundino Zuazo and Manuel Cristóbal Mañas in 1921. The latter had been for many years the head of the municipal office for the management and construction of the Gran Vía de Madrid, perhaps the largest project of all those launched under the 1895 law. The project was justified by the need to solve the traffic problem that was generated on the Arenal bridge and in the Old Town. To do this, the bridge was widened and a large avenue was opened that crossed the Old Town from the Arriaga theatre to the church of San Antón. Here the operation was clearly reminiscent of Haussmann's operations in Paris. On the other side of the river, in the Ripa dock area, he proposed two enormous blocks in which a large construction would be located that was reminiscent of what the Chicago School had done. The plan was rounded off by creating a port services area with several levels in Ripa, widening the Arenal bridge and placing a mobile bridge at the height of the pedestrian walkway next to the Town Hall. It was a highly speculative operation in which the solution to the traffic problems was nothing more than a mere pretext. The project died in the face of massive opposition from all those affected. Despite having all the official approvals, it could not be implemented and remained on paper. Not even the Mayor, Federico Moyua, already during the times of the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship, dared to support the start of the work.
But the traffic problem needed solutions because all the traffic entering Bilbao did so via the Arenal bridge, the only one existing until the famous iron bridge of Portugalete. In 1925, Ricardo Bastida proposed a solution in terms completely different from those of Zuazo and Mañas. Instead of insisting on widening the bottleneck of the Arenal bridge without giving any other options, he proposed that the demolitions be forgotten and that action be taken only on traffic. To do this, he thought of improving the entrance through Begoña to direct the traffic towards a new fixed bridge that would be built in the vicinity of the City Hall and that would enter directly through there into the extension, relieving the terrible junction of the Arenal Bridge.
For his idea to make sense and be effective, the new bridge at the height of the Town Hall had to be fixed and not mobile like the one designed by Zuazo. And this was the biggest drawback, because a fixed bridge closed the Arenal and Ripa docks to navigation, only allowing the passage of barges from that point. This is where the Bilbao Port Works Board was not going to compromise. In fact, the bridge was built mobile, in such a way that it opened in its centre and its two halves were raised when a ship passed. For Bastida this largely condemned the solution, because a fixed bridge, where traffic could pass without interruptions and a mobile one, where one would have to wait every time a ship passed, most drivers would opt for the first, rendering the new solution useless.
In any case, Bastida had n that the mentality of the 1895 law had been overwhelmed as an instrument to solve traffic problems and that the rational organisation of traffic was going to be much more effective without resorting to traumatic mass demolitions. In addition, the presence and importance of the Bilbao Port Works Board (JOPB) was revealed, which was to be one of the most important protagonists of the urban development of Bilbao from then on. Its opposition to fixed bridges and the fact that from San Antón to the Abra everything that was done in the vicinity of the estuary needed its permission, meant that it had to be taken into account. The JOPB was the administrative entity that controlled the banks. It depended on the State and Bilbao, its jurisdiction was supra-municipal and its domains could not be touched, much less bridges built without its permission. Thus, by 1925, when Deusto, Begoña and part of Erandio were annexed and the City Council was preparing to process a new expansion plan, the three major agents that were going to have to bring their positions closer together to make metropolitan growth viable were the Bilbao City Council, the JOPB and the Provincial Council of Vizcaya. The latter had lost many positions after the annexation, but the plan that it had commissioned from Bastida and which was the embryo of the first Regional Plan was given to the contestants so that they would take it into account and respect it when drafting their projects. An Access Commission was formed by the three entities, within whose framework Bastida's activities were carried out, which was then left to die after the annexations when the municipality acquired full competence in matters of urban planning.
Returning to the urban extension, the City Council quickly moved to organise the competition for preliminary projects for the extension. The aim was to collect the best ideas so that the municipal offices could then draw up the final project. The bases were formulated in 1926. The first prize went to the great master of German urban planning Josef Stübben, who had been invited by Ricardo Bastida. The final Plan was ready in 1927, but it had to include the new Deusto canal project of the JOPB, which required a new draft that was finally completed in 1929. In it, traffic was the essential element and the classic grid was discarded in favour of a more flexible mesh that would better adapt to the orography of Bilbao. In such a way that if in Begoña the curved streets were imposed going up the slope of Artxanda, leaving that space as the ideal for the semi-detached or terraced single-family houses that had been typical of the Cheap Houses policy, in Deusto they returned to a more orthogonal layout and closer to the assumptions of the expansion.
During the time of the Republic a new step was taken. When Indalecio Prieto was appointed Minister of Public Works, he commissioned Bastida to make a Railway Links Plan that would rationally organize the network of the various railways to connect Bilbao with its area of influence. The Plan was made in 1933. It sought to reorganize the stations of the different railways to connect them with each other and articulate the relationship the lines on both banks and resolve the problems of contact the wide and narrow gauge lines. In this way, an attempt was made to put order in the connection of the city with the port and its area of influence. This very interesting project by Prieto and Bastida meant the possibility of organising an alternative and efficient circuit to road traffic, which could thus lighten the load that would fall on it in the future. A very modern traffic model that would have meant cheap and comfortable transport for the entire metropolitan area. The Civil War of 1936 cut short the process.
In 1934 there was another important initiative. It was the proposal of Estanislao Segurola, Head of the Municipal Office of Urban Studies, who returned to the idea of directing the future development of Bilbao through the Asua Valley. The idea was already old and had been considered as a possibility for years. If nothing had been done about it it was because the entire process involved drilling a tunnel through Mount Artxanda and it was too powerful an infrastructure project for a municipality that still had abundant land for urbanisation after the annexations of 1925 and the new Plan of 1927-29. Segurola, greatly influenced by the German Siedlungen after his visit to Martin Wagner's Berlin offices, estimated that a new town could be built to accommodate some 225,000 people.
After the Civil War, the idea was revived, although the reconstruction needs were so pressing that it was put on hold for years. Despite everything, Asua became an unavoidable reference for the future of Bilbao, in the same way that the annexations of Deusto and Begoña had been in the previous decade. After the war, the first priority was the reconstruction of the accesses to Bilbao. At this point, the reflection followed the line marked by Bastida, where the important thing was the rational distribution of traffic. The interior reforms in the style of Zuazo and the law of 1895 had been overcome. But the City Council continued to insist on Asua and in 1937 commissioned a plan from Guillem Busquets. The Bilbao Falangists, in total harmony with the interests of the industrial oligarchy, sought to continue with metropolitan development, but in this first phase of the post-war period they saw how the new State turned its back on them. Busquets' plan remained on paper. But the plan continued, and in 1940 the annexation of what remained of the municipal area of Erandio was achieved. Meanwhile, the housing problem became pressing and shanty towns began to grow uncontrollably to accommodate the poor immigrants who came to the capital of Bizkaia in search of work. Once again, the need for housing became the justification for the need to expand. The single-family house model of the Cheap Houses policy was abandoned and a tendency was made to use a multi-storey block solution. Thus, in 1941, work began on Torremadariaga and Enekuri.
It was not until 1943 that the major urban planning plans were resumed, because reconstruction absorbed all municipal capacity. But some results were achieved, such as the municipalisation of the tram service in 1939, in an attempt to rationalise traffic by taking advantage of the elements that already existed. The first moves with a chance of success on the road to a great urban planning plan took place in 1942. The appointment of Joaquín Zuazagoitia as Mayor in 1942 and the arrival of Pedro Bidagor began to make a difference. Bidagor was the Head of the Urban Planning Section of the General Directorate of Architecture and had been responsible for the Madrid Extension Plan. In 1943 the Urban Planning Section had already drawn up its plan for Bilbao. Based on the administrative basis of the 21-municipal community, the ambitious Plan for Greater Bilbao took the legacy of Bastida's Regional Plan and carried it through to its ultimate consequences.
The basis of the project was the network of river, rail and road traffic communications in the area around the estuary, which became the backbone of the whole complex. Roads were given priority over the other two options because Bidagor used them as limits to the expansion of the new urban centres. An attempt was made to take into account the interests and plans of the different entities that were active in the area, particularly those of the JOPB, and an effort was made to unite the solutions and avoid conflicts of interest. The plan, in addition to defining the geographical limits of the action and taking into account the JOPB projects, delimited the uses by area, finally addressing Bastida's old demand. In addition, it defined the location and shape of the new satellite towns and carefully studied the sanitation networks and the layout of the green spaces. Finally, it made an estimate of the time needed to ute the project.
Five different areas were delimited for zoning purposes. The first included Bilbao and Asua, the second included Leioa/Lejona and Axpe, then there were the towns in the manufacturing and mining area. The fourth zone included Portugalete, Getxo and Santurtzi, and the last included Basauri, Galdakao and Ariz. Thus, Bilbao was left as the administrative centre and Asua was given a medium residential use with the possibility of industrial areas. Barakaldo, Sestao, Basauri and Galdakao were left for industry and workers' residences. Getxo and Portugalete were reserved for tourism and the most luxurious segment of residential use, with Santurtzi as a fishing sector with more modest housing than its neighbouring towns. With this separation, Bidagor made zoning the second fundamental element in the articulation of the metropolitan space, since the first had been the circulatory skeleton.
The plan was approved in 1946. But it needed a new law to be able to be developed because zoning did not exist as an instrument within the current legislation. So with the approval of the plan, the legal body necessary for its ution was also obtained. In addition, a planning figure of such extension and with so many contents required a model of development plans, smaller ones that dealt with completely defining the layout of each sector. At this point, Bidagor designed the Partial Plans, a very important figure within Spanish urban planning that has survived to this day. With these Partial Plans, Bidagor would manage to reach the scale of architecture, even defining the shape of the city in elevation. In this way he managed to cover the entire segment of the creation of the city, from the Regional Plan that indicated the road structure of the territory, the zoning and the sectors, to the Partial Plans in which the final shape of the city could be appreciated in its buildings. Never before had such rigorous control been achieved over the urban development process, nor had such a strong reduction in the prerogatives of private individuals with respect to the content of the rights to their properties been achieved. The Partial Plans were drawn up around 1947. The first had been for Deusto, already at the end of 1946. In 1947, the Corporation of Greater Bilbao, created to ute and manage the Plan of 43, and the State approved the new graphic document for Deusto. In mid-1947, the competition was called for the Partial Plan for the southern part of Bilbao, which included the vicinity of Rekaldeberri, Torre Urizar, Larraskitu and San Adrián. But its process was very slow and it was not approved until 1952. The third was the Partial Plan for Erandio, which was made public in 1952. The last was that of Begoña. In 1952, special ordinances were published for the ution of all of them and the last three were not finished until 1957. But practice ed that a figure even smaller than the Partial Plan was needed to be able to face their ution. The new land law of 1956 introduced the figure of the Polygons, as areas of action within the Partial plans. With them, the last step of development was reached. As an immediate consequence of the approval of the law of 56, Bidagor formulated the Plan for Barakaldo.
But the creation of the Ministry of Housing in 1957 totally altered the institutional panorama. From this Ministry, the way of building housing was sought by any means, going so far as to skip the building limits marked by the plans and increasing them to attract private developers to the construction of housing neighbourhoods. In 1958, the problem of shanty towns in Bilbao affected more than 25,000 people. So much so that in 1959 the Social Emergency Plan for Vizcaya was approved. Its immediate consequence was the creation of the Otxarkoaga neighbourhood, to house 3,672 shanty town dwellers. As for the fate of Bidagor's plans, they were severely compromised by the excess of precision, by the almost obsessive need to define everything related to the city to the limit. Its scope and its capacities were impressive, but its lack of flexibility nullified its capacity to adapt to changing circumstances and to the new directions marked by Arrese as Minister of Housing. With Arrese, the activity of the National Housing Institute became detached from the urban planning plans, even going so far as to ignore their specifications in order to build the greatest number of houses. Bidagor was disassociated from the Corporation of Greater Bilbao and the validity of the Plan of 43 was maintained, although the Partial Plans were distorted.