Seville: A city with two souls

•The rich history of Seville created an original archetype with the city adhering to tradition and customs.•Seville has been a battlefield where tradition and modernity have been vying with each other.•Seville needs a model of co-existence between profound transformations and urban stagnation.•Seville has been capable of renewing the relationship between urban space and the citizen.•The urban transformation of a historic city needs to maximize the public participation.

Seville is a city of 700,000 inhabitants in the south of Spain. It is currently the administrative capital of the region of Andalusia. However, Seville was once the most important city in the Spanish Empire, and a global metropolis when it monopolized trade with ‘the Indies’. Its historical past, its subsequent decline and its traditions (many of them religious) generate a range of perceptions among local society as to what the city should be. After being transformed in the wake of the two World Expositions that were staged in the city in the 20th century, at the beginning of the 21st century a change was proposed to Seville’s planning model that would not clash with its past. This profile seeks to analyze this period and interpret whether these changes and transformations to the city are part of a consciously created city model and to consider any inconsistencies and internal contradictions. The conclusions show that in periods of large-scale change in the city, the starting-point has to be an agreed city model that enables tradition and modernity to exist side by side, and that is based on greater public participation. The city profile of Seville is significant and useful as an exemplary case of a historic city being capable of renewing the relationship between urban space and the citizen.