The professor of Human Geography, Joan Nogué, talks with Shared Spaces about the shortcomings of urban sprawl.

Joan Nogué, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Girona (UdG) and director of the Observatori del Paisatge de Catalunya (Landscape Observatory of Catalonia), was interviewed by Shared Spaces in May 2013 when he took part in the lecture series In Common in which he presented the debate, titled “The City", between the philosopher Xavier Antich and the poet and architect Joan Margarit. In the interview, Nogué states that “the urbanizing madness of the past few years has created urban spaces but not cities”. He describes this scattered growth as being in the form of “blotches of oil” which, without any connection between them, have created “environmental rupture” and “social ghettoes, of different classes and levels”. He says that the compact city must therefore be defended as the “space of sociability” that it is, and that peripheral urban spaces should be incorporated therein so that they can become a true city.