Project Description

The main findings of the debate, in the European context, on recent changes in urban policies are, on one hand, the acknowledgment of a growing diversification of initiatives and programmes of intervention and, on the other hand, the identification of several elements of innovation of practices and models. These changes involve different levels - local, national and European -of urban policies and different ways of articulating them strategically.

Evaluation of these processes is twofold. On one hand, the diversification of initiatives and programmes can enable the development of new possibilities of action. But, at the same time, there is a clear risk of fragmentation and of simple juxtaposition of meanings, priorities and models of action. At the moment, the balance between these two trends is not clear, depending on the ways they relate to the overall capacity of public (re-)organisation.

In this context, the project's main goal consists on the analysis of urban policies in Portugal and their recent transformations, placing them within a European debate's framework regarding urban policy definition and new forms of (multi-level) governance.

A specific topic of research - organizational change in housing policies - develops previous PhD research on housing and welfare systems. as a case-test for the study of governance changes in public policies and for the integration of urban, social and planning policies. Recent changes in Portugal, both at central and local level, highlight the need to develop, in the Portuguese context, two main theoretical concerns of housing studies: the discussion of the social (rented) market concept as a viable formulation for housing social policies; the discussion on the roles of organisations and of organisational change in the constitution of these policies.

Research Team

• Isabel Breda-Vázquez
• Paulo Conceição

Financial Support

• FEUP

Stage of Progress

• Concluded