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In Bilbao the future is already
reality. After years of relative decline, following the long
decades of economic preeminence in the national and European
spheres, Bilbao has been experiencing, since the early 90's,
a process of rebirth, is again finding itself, discovering itself.
Like a reborn phoenix, it rises again from the search for new
economic activities and from an intensive collaboration between
public and private agents. Thus there arise numerous emblematic
projects that together shape a progressive turn to an intelligent
development of the city in which culture, knowledge, advanced
services, leisure, and tourism take the lead over other, more
traditional activities.
Following the thrust of the Guggenheim Museum, the urban
fabric of Bilbao embraces the production of a cluster of prestigious
architects who progressively give corporeity to a whole set
of emblematic and multiplier projects, such as the Euskalduna
Conference Hall, the Pasarela Zubizuri, the new terminal at
the Airport, the new Alhóndiga (Corn Exchange), the
underground Metro, the restored Tranvía (tram system),
the Isozaki-Atea gate, the Abandoibarra revolution, and so
on, which make the city of Bilbao, in the words of Christian
Hauvette (winner of the National Prize for Architecture in
France) a "city of haute couture".
Retailing, traditionally the leader in the urban service
sector, now becomes part of a synergic complement with other
intensive activities in knowledge and innovation, in a rich
and complex urban economic framework. A new role for a new
world-class city. A new business for a cosmopolitan, surging
city that reinvents itself to become capital of the European
Atlantic Rim of the century now opening. A new way of understanding
the retail business in collaboration and union with the other
services. |
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