This paper proposes a generalized structure descriptor (GSD), that offers an MPEG-7 compliant template for the introduction of a large class of local image content descriptors. The standard MPEG-7 color structure descriptor (CSD) is a particular case of the proposed GSD. The GSD descriptor embed color and spatial distribution information, allowing a compact description of color and texture to be used in content-based image retrieval. We will present several particular cases of spatial image structure description. Experiments show that the proposed descriptors can be successfully used for color texture and general image recognition and retrieval.