A Study of Porto’s Polycentric Metropolitan Development and Governance at the Turn of the Millennium

ABSTRACT This article contributes new knowledge to the area of metropolitan planning in Portugal by shedding light on the first generation of metropolitan governance legislation and territorial dynamics in Porto. The overall premise is that the rise in polycentrism in Porto and the weakening of its city centre in the 1990s was a timely representation of the city-region development process taking place in Portugal’s second largest metropolis. Strategic investments in the city since then have substantially contributed to filling that activity vacuum to the point where concerns have now emerged about commercial and touristic gentrification. Porto’s metropolitan area was greatly affected by being the second most important urban area in the country and new planning mechanisms and strategies were needed to attempt to fully close the activities and spatial gap in the city of Porto as well as to efficiently and effectively help plan the whole northern metropolis.