ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter discusses the role that the evolution in urban development and urban planning in Portugal have played with regard to the outbreak of the economic and financial crisis, and the impact that this crisis had on urban planning and territorial management in Portugal, in the short and long term. It is an assumption that the recent developments in urban planning, territorial management, and urbanisation in Portugal have been motivated by unsustainable drivers that have also led to the financial and economic crisis, in particular relating to the real estate and financial sectors. The crisis is strongly interconnected with urbanisation processes as well with urban planning and territorial management activities. It is thus a specific objective of this chapter to discuss this interconnection, while explaining the evolution of recent urban planning and territorial management in Portugal. In this chapter it will be shown that planning in Portugal, while finally holding the adequate instruments to properly develop Municipal Master Plans (PDM), faces the effects of the economic recession caused by the crisis and by previous development activities. This chapter also shows that such planning instruments took time to be adopted, since their legal framework has arrived late; such as the Ground Basis Law on Territorial Planning and Urbanism (LBOTBU) (PP, 1998) and the Juridical Regime of the Territorial Management instruments (RJIGT) (MEPAT, 1999) which were published a decade after the elaboration and application of the first Municipal Master Plans, shortening the possibility of preventing unsustainable activities, which in the long term fed the outbreak of the crisis. The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) framework for Urban Planning also arrived late and, deriving from the European Union Directives (Directive 2001/42/CE) (Partidário, 2007), presented an opportunity of regulation which was not always concretised when applied to Portuguese planning culture (CNADS, 2012). The obligation to evaluate planning brought advantages and a better control of the results and impacts of planning, but it arrived when many unsustainable development strategies were already in motion. Within this evaluation process, however, the environmental impact of urbanisation, and those impacts related to nature conservation were progressively taken into
account. Despite this, the issues of energy dependence, carbon emissions, and climate change were only inserted later in these evaluations. After this introduction, the chapter is structured in two sections, each containing three subsections. Finally, it presents conclusions. The opening section ‘Urban planning and municipal plans in Portugal from 1988-2008’ presents an overview of the recent history of urban planning and territorial management in Portugal, addressing the process of elaboration of the Municipal Master Plans (PDM) from 1988 to 2008. Three specific periods will be analysed: 1988-1998 when the first Municipal Master Plans were elaborated; 1998 the year of the publication of the first Ground Basis Law on Territorial Planning and Urbanism (LBPOTU); and 1998-2008 when the second generation of Municipal Master Plans was developed under the provisions of the new Ground Basis Law, and within the framework of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), calling for consideration of new global ecological concerns. To describe the interconnection between urbanisation and the crisis it is necessary on one hand, to address the impacts of urban development and planning on the evolution of the crisis, and on another hand, to address the impacts that the crisis had on urban development and on urban development and planning. In this context, the next section ‘Impacts of the crisis on the present and future of urban planning in Portugal’ addresses the bilateral impacts between urbanisation and planning activities and the crisis in Portugal. It also analyses what impact urban planning and territorial management activities in Portugal had on environmental protection, on the use of energy and on mobility patterns, wherein amplifying the effects of the crisis on the municipalities and families. In the first subsection of this second section of the chapter, we shall discuss the impacts of the crisis planning needs to deal with as well the changes in planning, motivated by the current crisis, in terms of ensuring sustainability, environmental protection, and implementing SEA. In the second subsection the challenge and opportunity of ‘sustainable cities’ will be introduced. In the last subsection, the crisis will be addressed as a driver of ‘low carbon’ urban planning and territorial management, illustrating the effects that a sustainable material dynamics and restricted access to fossil fuels can have on urbanism and urban planning. The chapter ends with some conclusions, while identifying some key ideas related to the antecedents and impacts of the 2008 financial and economic crisis on urban planning and territorial management in Portugal.
