The expansion of urbanisation in the Balearic Islands (1956–2006)

Since the mid-20th century the Balearic Islands have experienced significant changes as a result of their incorporation into the global economy as a mass tourism destination. The expansion of urbanisation has become a main change, given that the archipelago’s urbanised surface has increased fivefold since 1956. The territory of the islands has been organised internally to meet the demands of, first, tourism, and, second, the residential demands of Central European countries. The process has generated a whole new territorial model, dominated by new urban coastal and metropolitan areas in larger cities. This new model overlaps the regular traditional scattered centres inland with some walled coastal towns, from the pretourist model. This paper quantifies, describes, and explains these changes based on data from a series of land cover maps of 1956, 1973, 1995, and 2006, paying special attention to the particularities of each of the islands: Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera.