Urban form and planning in Lisbon and Oporto: Fid-Bau Portal

Urban form and planning in Lisbon and Oporto

Oliveira, Vítor / Pinho, Paulo

The paper presents a critical review of the most influential planning policies on the evolution of the urban forms of the two largest Portuguese cities, Lisbon and Oporto, since the second half of the nineteenth century to the present day. The authors approach the planning processes of the most relevant territorial expansions of these cities through a systematic analysis of the main municipal plans produced 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 reshaping of existing and construction of new urban spaces, provides enough evidence to support the conclusion that, overall, planning policies were able to generate far greater and lasting impacts on the urban fabric of the city of Lisbon than on the urban fabric of Oporto. It is argued that in the first part of the timeframe covered by this research, the main differences in the output of the two local planning systems under analysis, as far as urban form is concerned, were due largely to the lack of a strategic and ambitious vision for Oporto. In the second part, the availability of larger technical and financial resources seemed decisive in explaining the profound changes operated in the urban form of Lisbon.