Urban form and municipal planning in Lisbon and Oporto

Abstract

The paper presents a critical review of the most influential planning policies on the evolution of theurban forms of the two largest Portuguese cities, Lisbon and Oporto, since the second half of the nineteenthcentury to the present day. The authors approach the planning processes of the most relevantterritorial expansions of these cities through a systematic analysis of the main municipal plansproduced in this historical period. The analysis of the strategic goals of each planning document,corresponding implementation practices, and the effective achievements of each plan in the reshapingof existing and construction of new urban spaces, provides enough evidence to support the conclusionthat, overall, planning policies were able to generate far greater and lasting impacts on the urbanfabric of the city of Lisbon than on the urban fabric of Oporto. It is argued that in the first part of thetimeframe covered by this research, the main differences in the output of the two local planningsystems under analysis, as far as urban form is concerned, were due largely to the lack of a strategicand ambitious vision for Oporto. In the second part, the availability of larger technical and financialresources seemed decisive in explaining the profound changes operated in the urban form of Lisbon.