The Bilbao effect beyond the Guggenheim Museum Urban and social renewal of a Metropolis from green-blue and grey infrastructure

Traditionally, the Nervión river has infuenced the urban network of Bilbao, from a functional, social, and environmental point of view. This chapter aims to expose the role that the river has played in the spatial planning of the Bilbao Metropolitano as both a cohesive territorial agent and an element of social segregation. It historically reviews the urban development of Bilbao and its estuary, focusing on the economic and social crises of the last quarter of the twentieth century and the urban transformation process of the last decades. The chapter has three sections. The first section discusses the history of Bilbao and the consequences of the economic crisis of the 1970s that prompted the ‘Bilbao model’. The second part focuses on the history of the metropolitan development of Bilbao by reviewing the management plans proposed since 1925. The last section highlights the role of grey infrastructure, complementing the blue, in building a new metropolitan social consciousness. The gray infrastructure related to public transport and the blue infrastructure to the river are the key pieces for the social and environmental rebalancing of Bilbao Metropolitano.