... “A surplus of space provides new possibilities. A dearth of long-term options for repurposing is replaced by the ephemeral activities of interested parties who have little capital to spare. They experiment with new uses and forms of cooperation, create social interactions, and give new cultural meaning to what was found there. Not every space will find interested parties, and [some of] the fleeting actions are of limited duration. Still, sometimes they represent seeds for longer-term developments”.

-Phillipp Oswalt, Shrinking Cities: Volume 2(1)

One rarely associates struggling post-industrial Detroit, Cleveland, Manchester, Liverpool, Halle, or Leipzig with the cosmopolitan global metropolis of Madrid. Yet, as of the autumn of 2008 Madrid, and much of Spain for that matter, has been facing a widespread condition of massive over-urbanization and vacancy brought on by nearly two decades of untamed real estate speculation and highly lubricated credit that suddenly went dry with the global financial collapse of that year2. The result is vast and numerous territories of incomplete and unoccupied real estate development at the periphery of established cities like Madrid, as well as entirely new dormitory towns well outside of these conurbations without a commensurate population and revenue stream to occupy and support them. In many cases, building foundations, train platforms, public parks and vehicular roadways have been left incomplete or abandoned, producing the vaguely familiar markings of attempts at urbanization, like giant Druid crop-circles on the Iberian landscape...