Urban planning and territorial management in Portugal: Antecedents and impacts of the 2008 financial and economic crisis

Abstract

This chapter aims to discuss the role that recent developments in urban planning and territorial management in Portugal have played with regard to the outbreak of the financial and economic crisis. On another hand, it also intends to address the impacts that the crisis had on urban planning and territorial management in Portugal. To inform this discussion, an overview of the recent history of urban planning and territorial management in Portugal is presented, addressing the Municipal Master Plans. It analyses three specific periods: 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 and 1998-2008, when the second generation of Municipal Master Plans was developed, already under the provisions of the new Ground Basis Law, and within the framework of the Strategic Environmental Assessment, calling for the consideration of new global ecological concerns. Such antecedents are important to understand the bilateral relations between urban planning and territorial management activities and the recent financial and economic crisis.