URBAN REGENERATION IN PORTUGAL: trends, issues, challenges

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URBAN REGENERATION IN PORTUGAL trends, issues,
challenges
Monitoring the Urban Dimension in Cohesion
Policy Spanish and Portuguese Perspectives Madrid
, 2 and 3 April 2008
Jorge Malheiros Centre for Geographical
Studies University of Lisbon
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1.1 A changing city

• A new economy that valuates knowledge-base
  productions and it is highly service-driven
• Volatile labour and social relations a
  diversification of patterns (the end of the
  middle-class prototype family)
• A higher degree of global integration and
  interdependency
• An increasing cosmopolitanism and socio-cultural
  diversity
• The prevalence of strong social inequalities in
  the context of a more fragmented space and
  society
• A less interventionist state (more
  regulationist?) and an amplification of the role
  of market in the various domains of social life

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1.2 as required new urban policies
Territorial Policies and Urban Planning
Source Barata Salgueiro, T. (1998) adapted.
Source Barata Salgueiro, T. (1998) adapted.
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1.3 and different intervention principles

• Renewal Rehabilitation
  Regeneration
• New structures Recovery of old structures
  Multi-dimensional integ.
• Functionalism Patrimony
  (sectors, actors, scales)
• Efficiency Return to the city
  centre Governance and Partn.
• Modernity Post-modern. Late
  modern. Sustainability
• Equal access Neo-liberalism market
  driven

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2. And regeneration in Portugal?

• Programmes and Goals 1990s-early 2000s
• PER and PER-Families (rehousing)
• IORU initiative
• EU URBAN I and II (socio-urban regeneration of
  critical areas)
• PROQUAL (socio-urban regeneration of LISBONs
  peripheries)
• POLIS (urban regeneration-environmental
  requalification)
• AUGIs (legalization and restructuring of
  clandestine housing quarters)
• Instruments for rehabilitation of consolidated
  central areas of the cities
• Large symbolic regeneration interventions
  (Eastern Lisbon Seafront)
• QUALIFICATION AND URBAN RE-INTEGRATION OF
  CRITICAL NEIGHBOURHOODS (2005) (socio-urban
  regeneration of critical areas strong emphasis
  on participative action)
• Integration of instruments (PER and Collaboration
  Agreements in 2004)

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3. Gains and Hindrances from the 1990s-early
2000s experience

• Gains
• Improvement of physical space (housing and public
  space areas)
• A relevant set of territorialised social
  initiatives (aiming youth, training)
• Some development of the integration
  (software-hardware) principles on urban
  intervention
• A progressive development of participative
  strategies
• The development of a culture of assessment and
  monitoring

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3. Gains and Hindrances from the 1990s-early
2000s experience

• Hindrances
• Limited integration of all these interventions in
  the global framework of city policy or city
  planning (even tension between the promoters of
  the several territorialised actions)
• Maintenance of large rehousing projects (new
  problematic areas)
• Limits in the sustainability of initiatives
  (urban intervention times distinct from political
  cycle times)
• Limited participation of the citizens and also of
  the civil society organizations in the design of
  the initiatives
• Non-helpful and paralyzing bureaucracy

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3. Gains and Hindrances from the 1990s-early
2000s experience

• Some broader results (in a critical perspective)
• Several of these measures are in line with the
  processes of
• - commodification of the housing market and
  also of the urban space itself
• - increasing socio-urban differentiation
• - devaluating the popular quarters as
  entities that structure urban life in Portuguese
  cities
• - not considering the social value of the
  informal nature of some urban processes.

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4. What about the future?

• Principles for city success in the future
• To recover the notion of Ville Solidaire
• To build the intercultural city not the
  multicultural city
• To promote social innovation and creativity

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4. What about the future?

• What should be expected from the programmes that
  are starting or about to start?
• A higher integration (in terms of programmes,
  responsible authorities and especially between
  the programmes and the global city policy)
• A set aside of prejudices (about the leadership
  roles in planning interventions, about the
  technical absolutism in the conduction of
  interventions)
• New conditions for partnership (new culture of
  partnership between institutional actors and
  especially in the incorporation of civil
  society)
• Flexibility based in trust and in better
  responses (reduction of bureaucratic costs to
  look for creative responses adapted to the
  features of each place to be imaginative in
  finding solutions that are capable of integrating
  the informal)
• To strengthen the social value of the
  interventions

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Thank you