Costa del concrete
SOMETIMES Spain seems to be a huge, cacophonous building site.
Thus starts an article from the Economist entitled Costa del concrete...
I'm not going to reprint the whole article here, but it does have some eye opening numbers in it and is really worth a read. Check out some of these quotes:
- As much as one-third of Spain's Mediterranean coast is under concrete.
- The boom has created a construction industry worth as much as 16% of Spain's economy.
- Spain is the biggest consumer of cement in the European Union, sloshing down almost 50m tonnes of the stuff every year. In 2004 some 180,000 holiday homes were built along the coast. A million more are planned on the Costa Blanca alone over the next decade.
Get a handle on those facts and figures. That is a lot of cement and a lot of new houses for the Costa Blanca. And don't be mistaken, they aren't simply referring to the coastal locations, but also inland areas where many people have found the lower priced housing better suited to their pocketbook.
While having one third of the coast under concrete is not likely a good thing, at least their still remains acres upon acres of untouched, unserviced land in the hillier northern Costa Blanca. Hopefully that walking, hiking, climbing and mountain biking paradise will remain the way it is for time to come.
Here's an interesting read entitled Coastal Destruction - Hurray for Greenpeace, also see the comments
How long until they fill up the Med and start building all the way round the Atlantic coasts as well? At least in some parts of the Med (around Javea for example) a lot of the construction is limited to low-level villas. It's the flat blocks that are such an eyesore....
I agree, the blocks are an eyesore, but even the attached villas, when there are whole schools of them like in Gran Alacant, for example, get to be an eyesore.
Who knows what will happen, I just hope that they stay away from some of the beautiful inland valleys, and also from Andalucia, where there still seems to be miles of rugged untouched coastline.
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