Construction of Social Housing Complexes in Portugal During the Estado Novo (1933-1974)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the urban growth experienced in the third quarter of the 20th century due to the generalized deficit of housing in Portugal —by the transfer of population from rural to urban areas— and which characterized European cities mainly during the last century. This period was marked by great growth of cities and, therefore, one of the most considerable architectural and urban production in recent urban history. Following modern city’s precepts of the Charter of Athens (1933), Housing in Portugal shares many of the morphological and typological characteristics with the rest of Europe. However, housing policies developed in Portugal during the dictatorship of Salazar (1933-1968) and Caetano (1968-1974) —within a socio-political context marked by a strong control of the State— caused Portuguese cities to introduce certain peculiarities in their development. In this sense, the research has sought to address the general context —social, economic and political— that conditioned the construction of these urban complexes during the so-called Estado Novo (1933-1974) in Portugal. This contextualization framework on construction of social housing has been mainly built through an analysis of housing legislation approved in those years. The research has also required an important bibliography search for references to articulate the knowledge generated by other researchers. Likewise, statistical data of construction and housing elaborated by the National Institute of Statistics of Portugal have been consulted. Based on this information, the research has detected two political facts of clear influence in terms of social housing. On one hand, the end of the Second World War brought along industrial growth for some regions of the country, which became important centres of population attraction at the beginning of the 50s. The pace of industrialization accelerated in the big cities and with it the migratory dynamics from the countryside to the city. In this context, Estado Novo had to rethink the policy on housing, planning large-scale housing construction through development plans. On the other hand, Marcello Caetano’s Government, who was appointed the new head of government in 1968, tried to solve the problems of overcrowding that resulted from previous housing policy. This translates into an attempt to institutionalize and rationalize housing policy through the creation, in 1969, of the Fundo de Fomento da Habitação. It was sought to centralize the different public initiatives related to housing in a unique structure. It can be said that this period corresponds, in the sphere of housing and urban planning, to a transition for the policies that would develop after the Carnation Revolution in 1974.