The university crisis fifty years ago: The urbanization of the Bellaterra Campus of the Autonomous University of Barcelona

Abstract

The economic growth experienced by western countries after World War II led to the increase in birth rates and as a result, the number of young people with the possibility of university studies also increased. The higher number of university students trained in both sciences and humanities, added to the disappointment arising from the foreign affairs politics of some of these countries (mainly the United States), favored a change in social values that rocked the established regimes. The confrontation between the new social conceptions defended by the university community and governments in Europe and the United States were made clearly visible in the riots against the Vietnam War, in the United States, and the so-called “French May” in Europe. Result of all this was the beginning of the change of thinking universities as engines of social change and, consequently, a change in the universities. In Spain, then dominated by the regime of General Franco, the change came a little later and culminated in a plan of new universities that gave rise to the creation, among others, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. [Contrib Sci 11:1-6 (2015)] 

Keywords: Autonomous University of Barcelona (Bellaterra) · model of campus · Vicenç Villar Palasí (1920–1974) · urban planning · “French May”