Another mythology for local development? Selling places with packaging techniques: A view from the Spanish experience on city Strategic planning

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Abstract
Since their origin, cities have been trading and somehow competing with each other. From the commerce of the East Mediterranean to Mesopotamia, through and within the Anatolia peninsula to the Indus Valley and the Yellow River. Greek city states made a substantial shift in city autonomy that marked their role thereafter. City rivalry arose again and was noticeable by the eleventh century, first through the development of Mediterranean sea ports and thereafter by inland and continental crossroads, whose strength lasted for centuries during medieval times, where strategic points in commercial axes became large urban settlements. The birth of the modern state forced them to lose their political notoriety but not their economic importance, mainly due to the fact that the dominant economic system, commercial and then industrial and financial capitalism, used the cities as their economic base and image of the new social system. Moreover, rapid changes in the social division of labour were taking place mainly in the flourishing agglomerations. Already at the beginning of the century — and especially after the October Revolution — and for decades, main capital cities were portrayed as examples to follow in a world divided by political and economic blocks.