Urban Policies in Portugal

Städte auf dem Weg zur Nachhaltigkeit

“…Es wird vielfach auf das transformative Potential von ›Städten‹ verwiesen und diese werden zum Umsteuern aufgerufen. Gleichzeitig zählt Klimaschutz in den meisten OECD-Ländern nicht zu den Zuständigkeiten, die man in Deutschland als kommunale Pflichtaufgaben bezeichnen würde (siehe auch Bierwirth und Schüle 2012;Bulkeley 2010, 239;Cavaco et al 2020;Kern und Alber 2008, 15;Lundqvist und Biel 2007). Allerdings gibt es erste Vorstöße, die vor einigen Jahren noch undenkbar schienen, wie etwa in der Hauptstadt Frankreichs, die in den letzten Jahren nicht nur durch »die Ziele von Paris« Schlagzeilen gemacht hat, sondern auch auf Grund der Verkehrspolitik der Bürgermeisterin Anne Hidalgo (Parti socialiste ∼ 9 Sozialistische Partei).…”

Urban Planning Policies to the Renewal of Riverfront Areas: The Lisbon Metropolis Case

“…In turn, the subsequent POLIS XXI programme set a more coherent policy for cities [55] taking advantage of the funding from the 2007-2013 Cohesion Policy programming period. The programme embodied an intra-urban and city-region networking approach, promoting local and inter-municipal partnerships for the development of local strategies and action plans, involving different actors and agents.…”

Thirty years of urban policy in Portugal: challenges and multilevel governance

“…Innovation in POLIS XXI was mainly linked with three aspects: it expanded the intervention territories, being the city conceived in its intra-urban, inter-urban and city-region perspectives; it expanded the dimensions of intervention, to the benefit of a more integrative view of territorial development (for example physical, economic and social dimensions); and it introduced more participatory forms of governance and more flexible collaboration mech- Despite the robustness and scope of the policy framework introduced by POLIS XXI, which created high expectations in terms of its results (Barata Salgueiro, André and Brito-Henriques 2015), the outcomes failed to match these (Rosa 2018;Cavaco, Florentino and Pagliuso 2020). Several reasons for this, related to the operationalization of the policy and to adverse external factors, were pointed out by different authors.…”

“…Although Portugal has adopted this explicit national strategy for sustainable urban development, some authors question its real national urban policy nature. Some mention its lack of effectiveness (Cavaco, Florentino and Pagliuso 2020); others the existence of a fragmented urban agenda, which only responds to specific aspects of supranational agendas and to European programmes and public funding (Ferrão 2018). Several aspects associated with the operationalization of the strategy have been identified as factors that weaken it.…”

“…Among these is the fact that national strategy was elaborated by the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Development but the allocation of ESIF for ISUD approaches was designed by a different Ministry (Ministry of Regional Development), with little coordination between them. Moreover, the complexity and fragmentation of funding mechanisms (each often requiring a different set of strategy documents and action plans) make it problematic to scrutinize and to implement in a coherent way (Cavaco, Florentino and Pagliuso 2020;Rosa 2018). Furthermore, specific characteristics of the Portuguese political structure do not favour the greater autonomy and proactivity of cities needed to deal with current challenges, which will be discussed in the next section.…”