Area-based initiatives and urban dynamics. The case of the Porto city centre

Abstract

In face of the systemic character of urban problems and the uncertainty surrounding planning methodologies, the need to intervene in urban space requires a holistic and spatial-based approach, rather than simply attempting to regulate urban expansion. Such an approach has increasingly been used in restricted areas to deal with complex urban dynamics and conflicting interests. This area-based and multi-problem approach in urbanism, although not new, has gained new relevance as it is highly relevant to the urban competition between cities (and the ‘creative cities’ agenda) and is specially suited to deal with the transformation of urban areas with high regenerative potential. It is also easily associated with public–private partnership and the creation of the ‘atmospheres’ that seem to fit conveniently with the dominant expectations and interests of educated middle- and high-class residents and visitors. In this context, Porto, its city centre and its older heritage area in particular, has provided a very good basis for analysing and discussing the dynamics, intentions and results of area-based initiatives. This is particularly so given the persistence of a range of problems previously commonly found in other cities in Europe some decades which coexist with the dynamics that characterize the larger metropolis where there is a rich recent history of spatial planning in central areas. This article examines what may be described as Europeanization of Porto (and Portuguese) urban policy, and the associated different programmes, projects and plans, providing indications of the agents, processes and results, of what we see as a late and brutal process of transition from public action, or strongly regulated private action, to a dominant private, public-supported urbanism, where social objectives matter much less than aesthetics and ‘spatial-based vitality’, and urbanism seems to create new divides and increased spatial injustice.