Urban Planning in Portugal in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main periods in the history of urban planning in Portugal, the prevailing planning theories and its practical results, in the twentieth century. The research is based on two hypotheses: first, economic and social processes ('structure'), uneven in time and space, define the framework within which the different public and private stakeholders act ('agency'); second, a highly complex inter-relation between 'structure' and 'agency' is responsible for the different forms of urban planning. These hypotheses were tested taking into consideration the political and economic contexts, the development model adopted by the state, central-local relations in the field of urban planning, the legal planning framework, the dominant planning ideas and its practical application.