At the beginning of the 1980s the Generalitat received from the State the public land assets in Catalonia, transferred from the National Development Institute to the Institute for the Promotion of Housing. These assets consisted of some large-scale industrial sectors and reserves of land, envisaging the creation of new separate consolidations on the Anglo-Saxon model of "New Towns". In that context a new and different policy was put forward based, on the one side, on the promotion of balanced growth of the municipalities by reinforcing their extensions, urban continuity and social integration, according to a new model of what we could call the Catalan town and, on the other side, the creation of industrial sectors of appropriate size for all kinds of industry and spread all around Catalonia.

In the evolution followed in these twenty years it is notable that an important change in the "culture of urbanization" was achieved, giving preference to the building of dwellings over the urbanisation works and, finally, that this was done in accordance with the residual profits. In this way, all around the country and with the support of the town halls, a new model of urbanization has been consolidated provides for different figures so as to guarantee the efficiency of the town planning management itself, such as: urban planning consortiums, compensation boards, a system of cooperation and sectors of priority development, among others. Among these figures, mention must be made, for its specific nature, of the priority development sector, a form of collaboration between the public and private fields, provided for in the current Catalan town planning legislation, which enables the total execution of the sectors to be guaranteed in very tight times.

This model of action in the territory connects with the basic needs for available building land, and places the new sectors in the context of the network form of the towns and villages of our country, with a collection of towns of large and average size, relatively close the one to the other, to cover and serve effectively almost all of Catalonia.

The Generalitat is facing, therefore, the true problem of development, not creating new towns or isolated districts but promoting extensions and regenerating decayed areas in accordance with tradition and the urban outlines, with agreement as the basis for Catalan urban reform and renewal. These interventions extend the urban nuclei in an ordered and balanced way, linking outlying districts, completing the urban network, and providing integration into the municipality both for the new residential sector being promoted and the people who are to live there. In this way they benefit from the existing endowments and amenities, encourage the integration of the new residents, but also provide the whole development with new leisure and recreational spaces and the facilities that the municipalities have substantially lacked during the last three decades and which also solve problems within the urban nuclei.

In order to ensure that the new extension is configured with a varied social fabric, both the types of dwellings and new actions, and the agents undertaking them, have been diversified. Thus, the building contracts have been awarded to various agents, such as cooperatives and non-profit-making entities and private developers, and land has been reserved under the social policy itself for the construction of dwellings destined to the families with most difficulty in access to them. Thus, uniformity has been avoided, both for the models and for the inhabitants of the new extensions, and this guarantees the creation of sociologically complex districts which are integrated into and reproduce the pre-existing urban fabric.

On the other hand, there have also been many actions of urban renovation in different municipalities of Catalonia to counteract the negative social consequences that these facts imply. These actions answer to various diagnoses and complex situations, but in general they consist in acting on the urban framework to create new public spaces and improve the existing connections so as to encourage access. The demolition of dwellings in ruinous conditions has created sites where re-housing can be guaranteed, and various public or private developers accomplish these objectives of restoring the weft.

In summary, EUR 445M have been invested in the period comprised between 1981 and 2001, bringing the creation of 305 new residential sectors and the building of more than 55,000 homes.

The Government of the Generalitat, in the field of housing, has promoted three strong lines of action.

1. The construction of council housing: Between 1981 and 2001 more than 16,000 dwellings have been built, destined to families with financial difficulties in acquiring a home on the open market. These homes are classified in the different types of council housing envisaged in the housing plans: on the one hand, rented housing and, on the other, housing for sale, chiefly classified under a general or special regime. This line of action represents an investment of EUR 685M.

2. The creation of a public resource of dwellings for rental to young people: The objective of the programme for rented housing for young people is to put at the disposal of this group of population rented property adequate to their needs, in order to encourage them to become independent and to give them mobility.

3. The remodelling of the districts: The objective of this programme was the replacement of housing which was suffering structural pathologies or located in districts in a clear state of degradation from both the architectural and the town planning viewpoint. This programme has meant an investment of more than EUR 450M and has involved the remodelling of 16 districts, affecting some 9,000 homes.

The programme of promotion of land for industrial and service use has a double objective: the promotion of land geographically distributed throughout Catalonia in order to assist in the policy of territorial rebalancing, and the preparation and development of actions destined to large industries, research companies, the development of centres of service activity and concentrations of companies.

This rebalancing takes the form of decongesting the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, reinforcing the large urban centres, strengthening the areas of earlier industrialization or areas with good prospects for development and livening up the areas less favoured industrially. In another line of intervention, actions have been taken to concentrate a specific activity with general repercussions throughout the region.

The Government of the Generalitat has wished to prevent industrial installations from being widespread through agricultural areas and has been creating a pattern through the planning work carried out. Specifically, the aim is to supply services with an infrastructure of quality which maintains a balance between the parcels for building, of various types, and the public areas for parking, roadways and green zones. Special care has been taken over communications to the new industrial estates, with easy access to the principal communication axes and that there is no industrial over-saturation.

In broad figures and in the field of the promotion of industrial and service land, the activity carried out by the Government of the Generalitat of Catalonia between 1981 and 2001 can be summarised in the creation of 265 new industrial sectors and service installations requiring an investment close to EUR 600M, which translates into a total of 3,296 hectares of built land. In terms of industrial actions, 2,000 companies have been installed, with a potential of 100,000 jobs.

Specifically, the Government of the Generalitat has followed a land policy and, therefore, of action in the territory, with the aim of carrying out a continuous and rigorous task to obtain developed land around the country, while at the same time working towards the objective of achieving a significant integration in the actions carried out, both from a town planning and a social point of view.