Rationale

The project finds its rationale in current societal transition, in which adapted policies and practices are required to respond to fast changing times, with strengthened cooperation between research, public administration and development stakeholders. In a context of limited financial resources, particularly in South European countries, the relevance of adjusting spatial policies to optimize infrastructural management is paramount.

Lisbon Metropolitan Area is the territorial focus for the project. Its infrastructural development has attained a rather mature level, but critical gaps remain still at the intermediate levels of connectivity, cohesion and local integration.

In this sense, the project aims at contributing to emerging metropolitan development questions:

1 How can LMA optimize past heavy investment in infrastructure?

2 How can metropolitan development be framed without resorting to previous growth-oriented development models?

3 Which adjustments need to be made in the spatial planning policies in order to regenerate sites of critical urban, infrastructural and landscape fragmentation, in the context of the ongoing societal transition?

Specifically, the project is expected to improve response by providing clear policy linkages between three fields of urban policy which are seen as opportunities to capitalize existing spatial and infrastructural resources:

1 Open space, urban voids, metropolitan landscape;

2 Spatial development, infrastructural networks, mobility;

3 Urban and territorial regeneration, real-estate development, spatial planning policies.

The main project’s outcomes are:

1 The characterisation of specific patterns of change in LMA, namely those concerned with spatial fragmentation and land-use vacancy;

2 A contribution to the process of adjustment in the spatial management system (policies, projects, management) to tackle critical areas of regenerative potential in LMA and, specifically, in the area of Massamá-Caçém;

3 The development of academic based research (Workshops, International Conference, Post-Doc, PhD and MA Theses) with reinforcement of international networking and partnership with LMA institutions and urban development stakeholders.