City Hall and Territorial Development

Abstract

The current economic conditions impose a new role upon the local administration, a new one added to its traditional role as administrators of public services and managers of the local territory. City Halls are increasingly widening their action area to include spheres of interest that were previously not dealt with: fundamentally – jobs promotion and encouraging economic development. With respect to this, the article describes the important experience of the City Hall of Alcalá la Real (Jaén), whose trajectory of enacting strategies for local development are alternatives to the model of speculative development, strategies whose objective is to direct the potential for local community development by matching the interests of the citizens and the system of productivity in a balanced and sustainable manner, thereby contributing not only to the creation of new businesses and favoring the creation of jobs, but the advancement of territorial balance and social cohesion.