Municipal average building capacity: a strategic instrument for economic and financial sustainability of urban developments

Abstract

The main goal of this research consists in the development of a methodology based onterritorial plans and urban morphologies - that supports the computation of how muchaverage gross built surface is allowed in each municipality. It fits into the overall scope ofthe revision of the juridical regime of Territorial Management Instruments currently takingplace in Portugal, in the wake of the approval of the new Portuguese Basis Law of LandPolicy, Territorial Ordering and Urbanism. The assessment of building capacity hereinproposed supports the application of current territorial management instruments (such asthe Municipal Urbanization Tax) or new instruments - based on a fiscal monitoring overurban developments - in a clear, accurate and objective way. It, thus, enables theimplementation of the most innovative goals of this new Basis Law: raising equity andsocial cohesion, and ensuring that urban development processes are sustainable from aneconomic and financial perspective.The methodology to compute the average municipal building capacity is applied, as a casestudy, no the municipality of Ourém, considering the classification of spaces and the urbanindexes settled in OurémŽs Municipal Master Plan, in FátimaŽs Urban Development Plan,and in the Detail Plans currently enforced.It can be concluded that urban morphologies that derive from territorial plans support thedesign of new management instruments in order to: (i) strengthen municipal finance,ensuring municipalitiesŽ economic and financial sustainability; (ii) assess, in a clear andobjective way, the concrete building capacity of certain urban operations as compared withthe municipal average building capacity; (iii) quantify the concrete values that canpossibly be collected through current or innovative urban management tools; and (iv) warrant a better equity in the distribution of benefits and charges that accrue from urbandevelopment processes.