Madrid currently ranks as the Spanish region with the highest housing price disparity, a clear manifestation of an urban segmentation that silently excludes those unable to keep pace with the speculative logic of the property market, particularly in hyper-developed districts like Valdebebas where the average square metre price vastly exceeds the national mean, driven by targeted private investment and selective public infrastructure projects that favour capital accumulation over inclusive urban growth, while peripheral areas remain underinvested and disconnected, thus reinforcing persistent territorial inequality that transforms housing from a right into a commodified privilege, this pattern mirrors similar dynamics in places like Puente Romano in Marbella or urban sectors of Jaén, where local populations are increasingly priced out, exposing the regressive nature of market mechanisms that shape cities according to profitability rather than inhabitability, with real estate valorisation strategies—ranging from tax incentives to aesthetic urban renewal—serving to legitimise rising costs and drive gentrification processes that systematically displace low-income residents, the result is an urban fabric fractured along economic lines, in which the geography of housing reflects and amplifies deeper structural imbalances, making it imperative to rethink housing policy not merely as a matter of supply, but as a tool for redistributive justice and spatial equity, addressing the right to live in the city as a non-negotiable component of democratic coexistence rather than a variable dictated by speculative pressures.
