O turismo no Algarve. Padrões de urbanização

Abstract

This essay has the purpose to contribute to a better understanding of the different planning processes of urbanization. Due to its particularities and its controversies, tourism will be used in a case study. The changes are evident on the territory, making it urgent to have a better understanding of the various agents, contexts, scales and speed that influence it. The Algarve portrays the metamorphosis that the actual urban expansion is performing and encloses a huge variety of urbanization patterns, the majority are generated by the economic sector of tourism. For a better understanding of the dynamics between tourism and its territorialisation, the concepts of the tourism sector, the way they arose in Portugal, more specifically in the Algarve, and finally, the manner in which this is planned and classified have to be reviewed. The PROTAL will be used as the basis for a more profound analysis on how the urban expansion has been planned. The concepts used in this plan will be reviewed in order to understand its adaptability to the actual reality. The specificity of this procedure will be analyzed according to three case studies: Quarteira (where mass tourism is evident); Vilamoura (elitist tourism) and Barrocal (recent trend of colonization of ex-rural). These patterns of urbanisation are subject to the influence of the touristic activity and to the diversity of organizations systems of the touristic business, where the changes of the supply and the demand of the market dictate the rules. Here, the landscaping factors are fundamental pieces of attractiveness and the pressure for the use and the edification is evident. In each case, the different patterns of urbanization used will be thoroughly studied in order to better understand what future measures must be developed.