Portuguese-language network of urban morphology urban morphology in Portugal: Searching for an identity

The foundation, the development and the goals of the Portuguese-language Network on Urban Morphology, PNUM, a Local Network of ISUF, are here presented. Moreover, analyses of the several drivers that have guaranteed the consolidation of a Portuguese Local Network of ISUF are here introduced. Complementary, based on research conducted by Teresa Marat-Mendes and Maria Amélia Cabrita about the foundations of Urban Morphology in Portugal; this paper argues that the heterogenic cultural background that seems to characterize PNUM is not entirely novel; as it seems to reproduce a Portuguese characteristic or Identity that is strongly built over the ability to build connections and integrations between Portuguese individualities with international bodies, institutes and universities, over time. Moreover, such connections and integrations seem to have contributed to deliver the most innovative knowledge regarding the study of urban form in Portugal. Therefore, it is imperative to PNUM to assure within ISUF the continuity of such connections and integrations and establish new connections between ISUF members and local networks. Furthermore, it is hope that such interest can contaminate ISUF itself, and promote the opening of new bridges among ISUF members and local networks, but also to reopen former ones, so that a truthfully collective project with interest to the study of urban form can grow and contribute to fully acknowledge the Identity of ISUF itself.info:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersio

Lisbon territory from a morphological and environmental approach: lessons for a sustainable urban agenda

This paper introduces the debate of sustainable development from a fresh perspective. Through a comparative analysis provided by a number of case studies within the Lisbon Territory, in Portugal, this paper aims to demonstrate how the impact of subterranean and surface water management has determined specific territorial arrangements, urban morphological parameters and urban design solutions within the territory of Lisbon. It is argued that the acknowledgement of such territorial arrangements should provide important lessons that need to be recuperated by the discipline of urban planning in order to contribute to an effective Sustainable Urban Agenda. The specific goal of this article is to contribute to the building of a methodological framework that informs on how to intervene on the urban periphery, while integrating the city and territory; and also, how to make this integration work effectively for mankind and the environment. The sustainability perception that supports this consideration is built upon a vision that professes a non-pollutant urban system; that should result from the transformation of the current productive system, based on a systematic production of residues, into a new productive relationship with the territory.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologiainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Urban form and urban metabolism. Recent research and academic trends conducted at the Lisbon Metropolitan Area

Urban planning and urban design disciplines have been called to contribute for more sustainable communities. Approaching, describing, and measuring the urban metabolism calls therefore for the most appropriate tools to support the examination of the city from a sustainability point of view. Although prolific contributions have been advanced by the engineering disciplines, mainly in what regards the development of methods to quantify and measure the material flows that operate in the urban system, at the urban design sphere the study of the metabolism remains somehow obscure, delaying the necessary advances to guide the designing of the urban realm and of its necessary infrastructures to promote a sustainable city. This chapter summarises the research process promoted by the author of this manuscript, applied at Lisbon Metropolitan Areas, while promoting the study of the urban metabolism from a visualization perspective, for which the study of urban form proved to be fundamental. To do that, we examine the main contributions of the application of such visualization process, practiced in the past decade at Iscte - Lisbon University Institute, both in two specific financed research projects (MEMO and SPLACH) and at an academic domain, specifically at urban project studios of the Integrated Master of Architecture.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Planning for change: the forms and flows of Lisbon Metropolitan Area food system

The aim of this paper is to introduce the goals and some preliminary results of a research Project ‘SPLACH – Spatial Planning for Change’, financed by European Funds through Portugal 2020 Program, which aims to contribute with new knowledge for a desirable shift of existing urban planning policies, in order to promote a low carbon and social inclusive urban system. SPLACH is about the role of cities, city networks, urban regions, metropolitan regions, and of spatial planning, in addressing structural changes (from crisis and post-crisis issues to climate change issues) and the societal challenges associated to those changes. In order to contribute to the debate placed by SPLACH, this paper focusses its analysis on the contributions of two specific working packages prepared for SPLACH Project, which deals specifically with the thematic of Urban Planning and Food, namely: i) Transition paths to urban sustainability; and ii) Food Security and Sustainability.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

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

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.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Lisbon urban allotments A twentieth century cartographic account

Access to food constitutes one of the most basic daily human needs. Throughout history, cities have been shaped in order to accommodate the growth of food, namely in garden allotments. The shape and location of such areas have received differentiated levels of attention by city authorities, guided by specific planning paradigms, while determining different urban form arrangements over time, including those for the production of vegetable farming. This presentation exposes the first attempt of a legend proposal for the existing types of vegetation present in the “Plan of the City” for Lisbon, elaborated between 1948 and 1959. The identification of these vegetation elements is important as it provides an opportunity to better visualize the metabolic condition of the City of Lisbon, at a period of time when deep societal changes affected its urban and territorial arrangements. During the 1950s onwards, Lisbon testified the elaboration of a number of municipal plans, including new neighbourhoods, determining the reorganization of its housing fabric and the consequent vanishing of vegetation areas. The implications of these on the spatiality of the Lisbon food system are yet to be determined and urge for further investigation, namely on historical mapping sources as it is here attempted.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

When Lisbon met the Team 10 Cluster City

After the Doorn Manifesto (1954), Team 10 members synthesize their earlier projects into a new urban model: the Cluster City. In 1961, the Lisbon Technical Office for Housing (Gabinete Técnico de Habitação) – GTH was established by the municipality to resolve an ongoing housing shortage. Soon, the GTH planned the urbanization of the Chelas Valley, an agricultural area in the East area of Lisbon. This plan tested approaches to neighbourhood planning unprecedented in the municipality. Its Zone I Plan, by Francisco Silva Dias and Luís Vassalo Rosa (1966) was the first to be implemented, echoing in practice the Doorn Manifesto. Here, we identify urban forms used in this Plan, and the ‘ground rules’ that structured it and influenced its change over time. Furthermore, we ask whether Chelas can shed some light in the recent demise of examples like Toulouse-Le Mirail and Robin Hood Gardens.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Portuguese National Laboratory of Civil Engineering and the assemble of an architectural research agenda for the promotion of 1960’s-70’s Lisbon new residential neighbourhoods

World War II imposed massive territorial transformations throughout a number of affected cities, including the provision of housing and new urban infrastructures. To support such societal requests, some governmental research centres, promoted the development of scientific studies to sustain welfare policies. In Portugal, the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil, LNEC), which responded directly to the Ministry of Public Works, promoted the development of architecture and urban scientific research for such requests. Thus, during the second half of the 20th century, LNEC played a strategic role in guiding the Portuguese urban transformations, including in its capital city, Lisbon. The investigation conducted by LNEC’s architects-researchers, promoted the development of new theoretical research work and the elaboration of architectural and urban plans for specific residential areas. Research and practice were, therefore, articulated and promoted by LNEC. A number of new neighbourhoods planned for Lisbon between 1960’s and 1980’s, benefited from the contribution of LNEC researchers, including Olivais Sul (1959-1968), Chelas (1961-1966) and Restelo (1970-1984). This paper examines, for the above-identified Lisbon’s neighbourhoods, the research contributions, which have guided their architectural and/or urban proposals.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The role of food in re-imagining the city: From the neighbourhood to the region

Humanity is now believed to live in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, as changes have been reported on the atmosphere, air, water, and soil, but also on societal perceptions of these issues. This presentation departs from the theoretical assumption that the impact of the abovementioned changes on culture and the environment have not yet found a stable influence on urban planning. This presentation overviews the implications of the food system within urban planning while considering it as a socio-technical system which integrates production, distribution, transformation, consumption and disposal patterns. The production phase of the food system in particular, emerges as a fundamental planning challenge, extending to urban form solutions, individual behaviours, dietary regimes, inequalities in foodsheds planning, and the cultural capital of food. Accordingly, the food system emerges here as an opportunity to identify how current urban fabrics of cities and their rural and regional hinterlands can be transformed in terms of their metabolic function and respond to the needs of people and the environment. To do so, this presentation introduces the preliminary results of an analysis conducted by an ongoing research project SPLACH – Spatial Planning for Change, at two particular scales: the region and the neighbourhood. Thus, while focusing in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), in Portugal, we provide an analysis of the Regional Plan as well as of specific residential neighbourhoods located in LMA, regarding the relationship between the food system functioning and urban planning approaches. The analysis includes a comparative number of case studies which differ in urban form solutions, socio-economic conditions, but also geographical location. The results support the request for a stronger integration of the above-identified underexplored topics of the food system within urban planning, which will be fundamental to inform a new theory of the city that makes any serious contribution towards a sustainability transition.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Mapping sustainability transitions in contemporary culture

This presentation draws from research conducted at an ongoing project, ‘SPLACH – Spatial Planning for Change’, which aims to inform a sustainability transition of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area urban planning, towards an improved food system, responding to contemporary cultural concerns. But where does contemporary culture really stand with respect to sustainability? Among many contenders for supplanting postmodernism, we would emphasize hypermodernism, digimodernism, metamodernism and transmodernism, since in many respects, these paradigmatic views are engaged with a sustainability transition. Here, we assess how history, technology and visual culture are valued in contemporaneity. This is done by intersecting our readings of cultural paradigms with key ideas about sustainability, drawn from the SPLACH literature review. Moreover, we highlight opportunities for urban design to accomodate a change towards sustainable urban environments.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio