Finisterra, LX(130), 2025, e39141
ISSN: 0430-5027
doi: 10.18055/Finis39141
Artigo
Published under the terms and conditions of an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
PLANNING WITH INFRASTRUCTURES IN THE FACE OF AUSTERITY:
NEW OPPORTUNITIES IN THE PORTUGUESE PLANNING SYSTEM
FREDERICO MOURA E SÁ 1
RICARDO CARDOSO 2
ABSTRACT – About fifteen years after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), land-use planning practices remain
largely unchanged worldwide, even in regions affected by austerity and reduced public spending. Moreover, critical
research on crisis, austerity, and urban dynamics often overlooks land-use planning, creating a disconnect from
planners’ everyday realities. This is particularly relevant in areas undergoing extended urbanisation, such as Portugal.
The austerity measures triggered by the GFC in Portugal exposed significant shortcomings in its spatial planning system,
including its rigidity and inability to adapt to socio-spatial contexts marked by dispersed urbanisation alongside
demographic and economic decline. Using action-research methodologies, this study explored opportunities arising
from the crisis and developed a procedural tool, Infrastructures vs Building (IvB), which leverages infrastructure as a
reference point for land-use planning. IvB strengthens Portugal’s planning system by challenging expansionist urban
paradigms and providing quantified infrastructure data for land-use classification. Beyond diagnosis, IvB offers a
practical framework for integrating infrastructure networks into land-use planning, with relevance for Portugal and
other contexts.
Keywords: Infrastructures; land use planning; urban sprawl; austerity.
RESUMO – INFRAESTRUTURAS COMO REFERENCIAL PARA PLANEAR FACE À AUSTERIDADE: NOVAS
OPORTUNIDADES NO SISTEMA DE PLANEAMENTO PORTUGUÊS. Quase quinze anos após a Crise Financeira Global
(CFG), as práticas de planeamento do uso do solo mantêm-se praticamente inalteradas em todo o mundo, mesmo em
regiões afectadas por austeridade e redução da despesa pública. Além disso, a investigação crítica sobre crise,
austeridade e dinâmicas urbanas tende a ignorar o planeamento do uso do solo, criando um afastamento em relação à
realidade quotidiana dos planeadores. Esta situação é particularmente relevante em áreas de urbanização extensiva,
como Portugal. As medidas de austeridade resultantes da CFG em Portugal expuseram falhas significativas no sistema
de planeamento espacial, incluindo a sua rigidez e incapacidade de se adaptar a contextos socioespaciais marcados por
dispersão urbana, bem como por declínio demográfico e económico. Recorreu-se a metodologias de investigação-acção
para explorar oportunidades emergentes da crise e desenvolver uma ferramenta processual – Infrastructures vs
Building (IvB) – que utiliza as infraestruturas como referencial para o planeamento do uso do solo. A IvB reforça o
sistema de planeamento português ao desafiar paradigmas urbanísticos expansionistas e fornecer dados quantificados
sobre infraestruturas para a classificação do uso do solo. Mais do que um instrumento de diagnóstico, a IvB constitui
uma plataforma prática para integrar redes de infraestruturas no planeamento, com aplicabilidade em Portugal e
noutros contextos.
Palavras-chave: Infraestruturas; planeamento do uso do solo; dispersão territorial; austeridade.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Global land use planning remains largely unchanged post-GFC, despite austerity.
• Austerity revealed significant flaws in the Portuguese spatial planning system.
• IvB tool innovatively uses infrastructure as a reference for land use planning.
• IvB challenges urban expansion and provides data on infrastructure provision.
• IvB bridges the gap between infrastructure networks and land use planning.
Recebido: 22/10/2024. Aceite: 01/07/2025. Publicado: 01/10/2025.
1 Unidade de Investigação em Governança, Competitividade e Políticas Públicas (GOCCOPP), Departamento de Ciências Sociais,
Políticas e do Território (DCSTP), Universidade de Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193, Aveiro, Portugal. E-mail:
fredericomsa@ua.pt
2 City and Regional Planning Section, Knowlton School of Architecture, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of
America. E-mail: cardoso.24@osu.edu
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1. INTRODUCTION
Written fifteen years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers – at a time when new crises are
looming all around us – this article offers a critical yet constructive reflection on the enduring
aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, with a focus on land use planning in Portugal. Specifically, it
examines the current state of the Portuguese planning system and introduces a practical,
infrastructure-oriented planning tool: a GIS-based metric that uses infrastructure networks as a key
reference point to guide planning practices, particularly under conditions of austerity. Emphasizing
principles of rationalization and efficiency, the tool is tailored to Portugal’s specific context but holds
broader relevance for other setting seeking to integrate infrastructure more strategically into planning
processes.
The discussion begins with a brief overview on the lasting effects of austerity in contemporary
Portugal, drawing from existing work that highlights potential opportunities for planners during this
period. To further contextualize the proposal, key literature on the relationship between the 2008
Financial Crisis, austerity, and urban development is reviewed. This body of work has often overlooked
land use planning, which is crucial to many urban policymakers and planners. The focus then shifts to
the Portuguese planning system, identifying opportunities for transforming land use practices, and
ultimately presenting the "Infrastructures vs Building" (IvB) tool.
IvB is a metric developed to assess the capacity of infrastructure networks, with the aim of
improving the efficiency of land use policies and enhancing planning practices in a context of ongoing
urbanization. Through IvB, this article hopes to provide a concrete and pragmatic contribution to
better planning in the face of austerity.
2. PLANNING IN THE PORTUGUESE AGE OF AUSTERITY: SEEKING OPPORTUNITIES FOR
LAND USE PLANNERS
The fiscal crisis of the 1970s posed significant challenges for planners across the United States.
After decades of efforts focused on market growth, economic transformations such as high inflation,
low growth, and growing public deficits reshaped the conditions for planning. With neoliberalism
rising (see Harvey, 2005), austerity emerged as the primary political response to the downturn. In this
context, a group of progressive planners organized a conference in April 1979, which resulted in the
publication of Urban and Regional Planning in an Age of Austerity (Clavel et al., 1980). The edited
volume sought to explore “new opportunities for planners” (Kelman et al., 1980) during a time when
fiscal retrenchment was becoming the norm. The present article draws inspiration from this effort and
applies it to a different, yet connected, economic, political, and socio-historical setting: contemporary
Portugal.
A decade after the Great Recession, Portuguese analysts reflected on the severe consequences
of the 2008 Financial Crisis. The sovereign debt crisis of 2009, coupled with the European
Union/International Monetary Fund (EU/IMF) bailout in 2011, had devastating effects on the country.
Unemployment soared, public pensions and wages were slashed, and social services were severely
reduced. While banks were bailed out, income inequality rose, and poverty levels surged. Over five
percent of the population emigrated in search of work, and, as economist Ricardo Paes Mamede noted,
Portugal became poorer and less optimistic about its own future (Mamede, 2015). Austerity, initially
implemented under a center-left government in 2008, was intensified by the right-wing coalition after
2011. Like other countries in Europe, Portugal's economy faltered under austerity, and the principles
of the Welfare State eroded under sweeping budget cuts. José Reis (2014) called austerity a “regressive
form of political economy”, which led to harsh economic conditions.
However, the effects of austerity began to shift after the 2015 election. The right-wing coalition
lost its majority, and a new political cycle began with the center-left gaining power through
negotiations with anti-capitalist factions (Freire & Santana-Pereira, 2016). This political “contraption”
reversed many of the EU/IMF-imposed austerity measures. Pension cuts and public sector salary
reductions were reversed, the minimum wage was raised, and banks faced restrictions on evicting
mortgage lenders. These measures helped reduce poverty and curbed mass impoverishment, while
still adhering to the EU’s fiscal guidelines, resulting in an economic recovery celebrated by many liberal
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media outlets (e.g., Alderman, 2018). The Portuguese finance minister’s position at the helm of the
Eurogroup (2018-2020) further attests to Portugal’s apparent success in managing the crisis.
Despite this narrative of recovery, some critics questioned the true nature of these
achievements. As Nuno Teles (2018, par. 4) stated, there is “a different situation beneath the
appearance of economic success”. The central issue lies in public spending. To increase pensions and
public sector salaries without breaching deficit reduction targets, the government slashed public
investment by almost 30 percent in 2016, reducing it to the lowest level of public investment since
1995. This raised concerns about the sustainability of recovery, as critical infrastructure investments
in roads, hospitals, and other services were severely cut (Giugliano, 2017). While some of the austerity
measures were reversed, the “contraption” remained bound by austerity's logic, and much of the
public infrastructure investment was still curtailed. Critics have called this recovery a “myth”
(Príncipe, 2018) or “illusion” (Teles, 2018), noting the long-term damage caused by austerity’s
pervasive effects.
This backdrop is essential for understanding the current article. As planners committed to
progressive social change in Portugal, we must acknowledge that austerity remains an intrinsic part
of the current political-economic system. While it may be temporarily mitigated, full eradication
requires systemic changes that are beyond immediate reach. We cannot ignore this fundamental
condition as we continue our planning efforts. Like the American planners in 1979, who responded
constructively to fiscal constraints, Portuguese planners must also adapt to the realities of austerity
and find opportunities for planning under such conditions. This issue is not unique to Portugal. As
planning scholars have acknowledged (e.g., Ponzini, 2016), planners across the North Atlantic face
similar challenges. With fewer resources available for infrastructure development, planners must seek
ways to create spatial systems that promote social and territorial justice despite the constraints.
It is in this context that this article aims to propose an applied tool for planning in the face of
austerity in Portugal. By identifying specific “new opportunities” within the Portuguese planning
system, this tool seeks to address the limitations imposed by austerity while promoting progressive
planning practices. As austerity continues to affect planning endeavors globally, it is essential to
explore innovative methods that can support more equitable and sustainable urban development,
even within the confines of limited resources.
3. CRISIS, AUSTERITY, AND THE CITY: WHAT ABOUT LAND USE PLANNING?
The turmoil began in late 2006 with a sharp rise in home foreclosures, especially in low-income
neighborhoods across the US. This trend quickly spread, and by mid-2007, both low- and middle-
income housing markets had collapsed. The mortgage market had been inflated by subprime loans,
which had expanded dramatically since the late 1990s (Immergluck, 2009). This triggered a chain
reaction of economic instability that spread globally, culminating in the 2008 financial crash, marked
by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September. By the end of 2008, the global economy had
entered the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression – an era that became known as the
Great Recession.
The causes of the crisis have been widely debated. Conventional economists have focused on
diagnosing the malfunctions of the economic system, addressing issues such as the breakdown of
financial intermediation (Geithner, 2014), the failure to regulate the shadow banking system
(Krugman, 2009), or the challenges posed by rising household debt (Mian & Sufi, 2014). These analyses
have shaped policy responses aimed at preventing future crises. Marxist economists, on the other
hand, have offered a different perspective, arguing that the crisis was an inherent feature of
capitalism’s tendency toward instability. Some attribute the crisis to the financialization of personal
income (Lapavitsas, 2009), others to the rise in corporate profits (Wolff, 2010), and still others to the
tendency of the rate of profit to decline (Kliman, 2012).
It is not, however, only within the various existing strains of economic analysis that the story of
the Great Recession has been told. Different fields have focused on different aspects of it and multiple
other interpretations have been produced. Among the many variations, a particularly important line
of inquiry has come from urban studies and related fields. Following a Keynesian approach that puts
emphasis on worldwide imbalances and the effects of varying policy responses to the crisis, some
urbanists have presented cities as spatially condensed manifestations of the Global Financial Crisis
(e.g., Fujita, 2013). But the most pointed urban analysis has come from critical perspectives akin to
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those of the abovementioned Marxian economists. Drawing on similar views regarding capitalism’s
propensity to periodically generate crises, while at the same time reasserting the argument that what
causes them is the overaccumulation of capital rather than underconsumption or the falling rate of
profit (Holgersen, 2015), the work of David Harvey (especially 1982 and 1985) is key here. The idea
that urbanization is a vital solution to capital’s perpetual need to find profitable terrains for surplus
absorption (and is therefore a recurrent component in processes of crisis formation), is at the core of
what has been said. As Harvey (2010) himself has argued, there is nothing new, apart from its size and
scope, about the Global Financial Crisis. Its root causes, as many other analysts have added (e.g.
Aalbers, 2012; Christophers, 2011), lied in processes of capital switching that have been facilitated by
urban development and the expansion of mortgage markets. Under these approaches, cities are
conceptualized as more than spatial concentrations of crisis symptoms; urbanization itself is placed at
the heart of the Great Recession.
Another important aspect of the Great Recession was the political response that followed. After
the crash, governments, particularly in the Eurozone, enacted harsh budget cuts in an effort to stabilize
the economy. This response marked the beginning of what became widely known as the Age of
Austerity (Blyth, 2013; Schäfer & Streeck, 2013, among many others). Especially pronounced in the
periphery of the Eurozone, where governments and international organizations alike showed great
zeal for the restoring promises of voluntary deflation (Hadjimichalis, 2011), this came to dominate
political and economic life on both sides of the North Atlantic. This too has been subject to significant
scrutiny by students of urbanization, especially critical scholars.
A considerable number of studies have analyzed and discussed various dimensions of “austerity
urbanism” in the US and Europe. Making sense of the ways in which the Great Recession translated
into multiple forms of “austerity in the city” (Donald et al., 2014), an array of analyses has been
conducted across a multiplicity of contexts on both sides of the North Atlantic: from the variegated
ways in which austerity policies are restructuring the US metropolis (e.g., Davidson & Ward, 2018) to
the differentiated impacts of the Global Financial Crisis in cities throughout Europe (e.g., Schipper &
Schönig, 2016). This fairly extensive literature addresses a variety of issues, including questions of
both hardship and resistance (see Bayırbağ et al., 2017), but a great deal of it delves primarily into the
pressures put on local governments and the changing nature of urban politics.
One of the key concerns for students of ‘austerity urbanism’ has been how the Great Recession
reshaped neoliberal urban governance. If in the early days of the crisis, critical analysts were cautious
in postulating that neoliberalism could be falling into a predicament of its own making (Peck et al.,
2010), a few years into it few doubted that a renewed wave of neoliberal lization and fiscal
retrenchment was yet again working to dismantle systems of social protection, to restructure state
forms, and to hold people responsible for their own condition. In the US, where the systematic
offloading of financial risks and responsibilities onto the local scale unleashed what Peck (2012, p.
650) called a “fiscal crisis of the urban state” (see also Davidson & Ward, 2014; Kim & Warner, 2018),
the round of austerity that followed the Global Financial Crisis was characterized as an exceptionally
grueling and destructive transfiguration of neoliberal urbanism (see Peck, 2012; Peck et al., 2013). In
Europe, where fiscal austerity measures were often being implemented with even greater vigor,
analysts saw not so much the replacement or even questioning of neoliberal logics, but rather the
emergence of “super-austerity” (Lowndes & Gardner, 2016) or the rise of reassembled and intensified
forms of urban neoliberalism at the local government level (see Bailey et al., 2015; Fuller, 2017;
Schipper, 2013).
Yet the effects of ‘austerity urbanism’ extend beyond the explicitly political operations of city
governments. The administrative and technical spheres of urban development and planning – where
political struggles often unfold in subtle and less visible ways – are also shaped by what Peck called
“regressive redistribution” (2012, p. 650; see also Hastings et al., 2017). Spatial and land use planning
systems, for instance, were significantly affected by austerity policies. In many Southern European
countries, including Portugal, planning systems that once operated on assumptions of development
had to adapt to austerity’s constraints. As a result, spatial planning shifted from facilitating new
development toward maintaining existing infrastructure and managing economic decline.
Writing from the Portuguese context – which offers a distinct lens on the intersection of the
financial crisis, austerity, and urban planning – we draw on recent studies on urban austerity and
planning, particularly in Southern Europe (especially Knieling & Othengrafen, 2016; see also Eckardt
& Sánchez, 2015) to examine how the crisis has reshaped land use planning practices. Our aim is to
explore how planners can navigate austerity-driven constraints while still pursuing progressive urban
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development. A key challenge, in our view, is how spatial planning systems – long reliant on zoning
and land-use regulations – can adapt to reduced public investment and shrinking government budgets.
In Portugal, as in other part of the North Atlantic, planners are tasked with balancing fiscal
retrenchment and the ongoing imperative for urban development. This tension has prompted general
institutional and planning reforms (Ponzini, 2016), but also calls for specific strategies to maximize
limited resources while addressing pressing social and environmental concerns. It is in supporting this
“renewal of contemporary urban planning” (ibid.) that we propose an embedded tool designed to
transform the Portuguese planning system – a tool that assesses existing planning practices, identifies
areas for improvement, and provides a framework for creating more resilient, equitable, and
sustainable urban environments under austerity. Before presenting the tool, however, a brief on the
Portuguese planning system is necessary.
4. THE PORTUGUESE PLANNING SYSTEM AND ITS EXPOSURE TO THE CRISIS: AN
OPPORTUNITY FOR TRANSFORMATION
In 2004, a couple of years before the collapse of the American subprime housing market,
Portuguese architect and urbanist Bruno Soares articulated the uneasiness caused by a much more
local urban predicament. “After all”, he wrote in a national planning journal (Soares, 2004, p. 97), “it
seems like we’ve been planning for inefficiency". Reproducing a common lament about urban
development and land use planning in Portugal, a perception that often also prevails in media and
popular discourse, this statement is virtually consensual among technicians, specialists, and academics
(see Baptista, 2012 for a critique). The disenchantment reflects an array of frustrations regarding the
planning system that has been put in place since the late 1980s (see, for example, Cardoso & Breda-
Vázquez, 2007; Mourão & Marat-Mendes, 2016; Sá, 1989).
If sometimes the legal arrangements for land-use planning are accused of rigidity and
inflexibility, in many others they are blamed for being too lenient. The complaints might even be
contradictory, but the evidence is abundant. While it is patent that the complexity of the system’s
regulatory framework often renders it both inoperable and incapable of adapting itself to a constantly
changing socio-territorial order (Domingues, 2017), it is also true that the exercise of land use planning
frequently reveals overly permissive characteristics (Carvalho, 2003). Either way, with the conversion
of rural into urban land repeatedly occurring in informal (or even illegal) fashion, urban areas
throughout most of the country grew detached from infrastructure networks and the needs of the
majority (Mourão & Marat-Mendes, 2016). It may well be said that the discretionary power of
successive public administrations conceals a system that is often the mere epiphany of what Alain
Bourdin (2011, pp. 15-16) refers to as "liberal urbanism", a planning mode informed and sustained by
the "triumph of vague concepts".
The question of what explains this state of things has occupied local analysts for quite some time.
In 2003, after almost two decades of spatial transformations spearheaded by EU-led modernization
and growing economic prosperity, land use planner Jorge Carvalho held that the biggest shortcoming
of the Portuguese planning system resided in its generally unsatisfactory physical outcomes. He claims
(Carvalho, 2013) that investments have been made on a case-by-case basis and urban growth has
taken place haphazardly. The problem of land use planning, he concludes, results from an imprecise
definition of objectives as well as inadequate forms of implementation (Carvalho, 2003). Similarly, in
2011, geographer João Ferrão characterized Portuguese land-use planning as a “doubly weak” (Ferrão,
2011) form of public policy. In the view of the former secretary of state for spatial planning, the
problem lies in both the ends and the means of the spatial planning system. It is not only that the
system’s mission is unreachable due to the existing discrepancy between its aims and the actual
conditions for their attainment, the instruments of land use planning are also generally incapable of
mitigating the undesired effects of non-spatial sectoral policies because of their vulnerability to
external forces (see also Mourão & Marat-Mendes, 2016). There is, as he puts it in his indictment of the
Portuguese planning system (Ferrão, 2011, p. 25), “a simultaneous problem of efficiency and
resilience”.
Such criticisms of the Portuguese planning system underscore the importance of understanding
its scope and (in)successes from the perspective of a state that, in the words of geographer Álvaro
Domingues (2017, p. 12), has allowed itself to be captured “by the liberal capitalist system before
seizing any opportunities it had in the European social-democratic model”. Indeed, what theories of
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neoliberalism have described as state retrenchment does not quite capture the specificities of the
Portuguese case. While a complete dismissal of their explanatory potential might be unwise (see
Tulumello, 2016), there are enough distinctive traits to argue for a new theoretical lexicon (see
Baptista, 2013), particularly in the realm of land use planning. Although the current spatial planning
system (even in the most recent reviews of the general spatial planning policy, carried out, for example
in 2014) was initially envisaged as a mechanism for formulating public policies and safeguarding
collective rights, its instruments have more often than not prevailed as drivers of opacity, spatial
irregularity and land speculation (Carvalho, 2003; Correia, 2002). In other words, perhaps even more
than what has historically been at the core of the global capitalist system (c.f. Clavel et al., 1980),
planning in contemporary Portugal has been a market-serving activity that primarily works for the
interests of the private sector rather than those of the general public. Grasping the specific traits of this
condition is essential to understanding how the planning system was affected by the Global Financial
Crisis, as its vulnerabilities have become particularly clear in the aftermath.
“Under conditions of recession”, Clavel, Forester and Goldsmith said in 1980 about planning in
the age of austerity, “planners are called upon to an even greater degree to forge weapons to serve
private interests” (ibid, p. vii). In Portugal, the onslaught of austerity measures that hit the country in
2011 had devastating consequences across many sectors (see Mamede, 2015; Reis, 2014; Rodrigues
et al., 2015, among others), but in the cross-sectoral activity that is land use planning it came
particularly associated with a reckless pursuit for investment opportunities that suddenly left space,
place, and territory extremely vulnerable to a series of threats to their social and environmental
integrity (see Mourão & Marat-Mendes, 2016). If the crisis had direct, albeit territorially differentiated
consequences on public services and state capacities as a whole (see Crespo et al., 2016; Ferrão, 2013;
Seixas & Mota, 2015), in what concerns its spatial effects some of the most daunting risks had to do
with the local government’s loss of negotiating power, its declining levels of initiative, and the
likelihood that the system would become more permissive. In fact, beyond laying bare the fragility of
the Portuguese planning system, austerity contributed to reinforcing and perpetuating its institutional
and programmatic drift; to use the critical lexicon of Carvalho (2003, 2013); Ferrão (2011, 2013), the
crisis amplified its dual problem of efficiency and resilience.
Our objective with this article, however, is to think beyond such dooming fate and to identify
transformative openings within the Portuguese planning system. Taking cue from a long progressive
tradition of using critical situations to reflect and act upon societal structures, what we do here is to
propose that crisis conditions might indeed provide opportunities to change, redefine, and improve
land use planning practice. Indeed, the recent legal changes – introduced in 2014 and 2015 – are
already aligned with this perspective and suggest converging paths. However, paradoxically, their
implementation and assimilation into established practices have been slow. Moreover, at the
beginning of 2025, they suffered a significant setback, reigniting the perception that expanding
infrastructure and urban land is necessary.
This situation highlights the deep-rooted difficulty in shifting the paradigm that sustains the
system's functioning: replacing growth and expansion with the development and enhancement of
existing resources remains a challenging task. For when we look at the particularities of the Portuguese
case, we see more than the intensification of planning’s longstanding problems. We also recognize that
the Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath brought to light the need to pay better attention to what
is already in place. In other words, despite its inherently grinding impetus, the logic of austerity
reminded us of the importance of cutting back in what might be expendable, nonessential, and
nonstrategic. It might, indeed, provide conditions for improved levels of spatial justice. What we are
then suggesting for the Portuguese case is that an “ethos of austerity realism” – what Jonathan Davies
and Adrian Bua characterize as a mind-set led by tactics and strategies of “amelioration,
rationalization, co-production and development” (2016, p. 6) – would indeed be beneficial for a
practice of planning that ought to focus more on the efficacy of existing urban configurations. With that
in mind, the following section presents a systematic approach for land use planning that seeks to
strategically harness the potential of current infrastructure networks. Stemming from a broader
research project (Carvalho et al., 2013), this is presented as an instrument that makes the most of
austerity’s desirable propositions to defy its fundamentally abrasive logics – a tool for planning in the
face of austerity.
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5. INFRASTRUCTURE VS BUILDING: A TOOL FOR PLANNING IN THE FACE OF AUSTERITY
The cities of tomorrow became the urban areas of today. This is now a well-established truism.
In the age of extended urbanization (Schmid & Topalovic, 2023), the city is no longer. What exists
instead, urbanists Nuno Portas, Álvaro Domingues and João Cabral have long been arguing in relation
to the Portuguese case (2003, p. 17), is a comprehensive urban reality that we can hardly refer to as
“the city” without engaging in some form of semantic abuse. Under this new mode of extended
development, the urban then emerges as a widely dispersed, complex, and multifarious array of
territorial formations (Soares, 2002). What we indeed have is a multitude of arrangements that results
from the expansive and ever-increasing set of processes through which space is now produced, shaped,
and formed.
The sweeping nature of these emerging new formations of extended urbanization has several
effects, but few are more notable than those pertaining to the organizing functions of infrastructure
networks. In fact, as those same Portuguese urbanists have also pointed out, infrastructures now play
a central role in “structuring the emerging new urban model, acting at the same time as causes and
effects of its organizational principles" (Portas et al., 2003, p. 71). Building on this premise, this section
examines the spatial ramifications of Portugal’s recent (and arguably ongoing) austerity moment to
present a procedural tool for the Portuguese planning system that seeks to address this transformed
urban reality.
While austerity and its enduring aftermath have posed serious challenges to land use planning
in Portugal, there have also been some important opportunities for reforming and transforming its
practices. In a country where the planning system has struggled to regulate dispersed urban
territories, the past decade and a half has had a dual effect. On the one hand, austerity has exacerbated
long-standing issues – such as the fragility of local infrastructures supporting scattered settlements.
On the other, it has reinforced a growing consensus that Portugal’s expansionist urbanization model
must lose its dominance – a principle already embedded, albeit superficially, in the legal reforms of
2014 and 2015. In this sense, even if recent legal framework updates (January 2025) appear to
contradict this shift, we believe that austerity’s legacy can serve as catalyst for a new planning
paradigm. For its focus on rationalization, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness bears aligns with the
urgent need to shift from an expansion-driven model to one focused on optimizing existing urban
structures. Rather than perpetuating a cycle of unchecked growth, this moment presents an
opportunity to repurpose, rehabilitate, and enhance existing infrastructures. The tool we now briefly
present builds on this rationale, offering a framework to maximize the potential of already-installed
infrastructural capacities.
“Infrastructures versus Buildings” or IvB derives from recent efforts to understand and enhance
the role of infrastructures as drivers of Portuguese urban development (see Carvalho et al., 2013;
Moura e Sá, 2016). Both analytical and propositional, this is a GIS based tool that uses quantifiable data
to both decrypt the new territories of urbanization and strengthen Portugal’s current instruments of
land use planning. The aim is to work within the current legal and institutional framework (which was
revised and published in 2014 and 2015).
Particularly geared for dealing with spatial dispersion, the driving motivation behind IvB has
been to harness the structuring potential of infrastructures to streamline the incongruent spatial
patterns that currently characterize the Portuguese territory. By focusing on public space and street
networks, which not only comprise the infrastructural subsystem that most determines territorial
configurations but also typically represent about half of all urbanization costs (see Mascaró, 1994;
Moura e Sá & Carvalho, 2012), this tool then puts forward a gauging mechanism for adopting
integrated levels of infrastructure that vary according to installed or expected urban loads. The goal
that underpins it is that any given territory must adopt a level of infrastructural service that matches
the occupational pattern and its corresponding usage load. Beyond the boundaries of the system
within which it was developed, the ultimate purpose of IvB is to foreground infrastructure networks
as a fundamental reference for planning practice in the 21st century.
What IvB then does is to juxtapose and contrast infrastructural capacities and building patterns.
As a measuring and comparing instrument, this technical tool is applied to pre-defined intervention
areas where it proceeds to analyze the network of streets and public spaces in three basic moments. It
begins with estimated calculations of both expected usage loads and service capacities for each
network sectioni, it follows with an assessment of whether and where the network is being underused
or overloaded, and it finally confronts that result with the installed level of service and the presence of
Moura e Sá, F., Cardoso, R. Finisterra, LX(130), 2025, e39141
8
other infrastructural subsystems (water, sewage and electricity) along each network section. In the
end, the output produced are maps of infrastructural overload and underuse (see fig. 1) that allow for
an easy and efficient articulation with the instruments of the Portuguese planning system, ensuring
that the optimization of infrastructures takes center stage in their development and elaboration.
Fig. 1 – IvB outputs in the city of Abrantes: maps of infrastructural overload (left) and underuse (right). Colour figure
available online.
Fig. 1 – Mapas de sobrecarga (esquerda) e subutilização/folga (direita) de infraestruturas em Abrantes. Figura a cores
disponível online.
Source: Moura e Sá (2016)
In the various cases where IvB has been applied, with emphasis on Braga and Abrantes (see
Carvalho et al., 2015; Moura e Sá, 2016), the results show what in the literature is classified as an
excessive, fragmented, and oversized infrastructure network (Gillham, 2002; Graham & Marvin, 2001).
This not only confirms the abovementioned diagnosis made by Portas, Domingues and Cabral, (2011),
it also provides a quantifiable and georeferenced measure with which to analyze the mode of extended
urbanization that now is prevalent throughout much of the Portuguese territory and to closely
scrutinize the associated underuse of its infrastructure networks across the entire country (see also
Castro et al., 2015; Gaspar, 1999). For example, the existing street system in Abrantes (see fig. 1), a
"city" with about ten thousand buildings, could still hold the construction of another eight thousand
units. Even if based on estimates and projections, IvB holds the potential of moving us closer to a more
decisive appraisal of how disproportionate the current endowment of infrastructure actually is.
Enhancing generalist and overly discursive indictments of our dominant urban condition, it helps us
question the wastefulness of sectoral investments based on a logic of market expandability, while also
allowing us planners to get a more precise picture of the territory and its infrastructures.
In view of what might be some of the constructive aspects of Portugal’s recent austerity moment,
namely the focus on urban rehabilitation or the optimization of already existing infrastructural
networks, IvB might then contribute to a more efficient and resilient planning system in a few
Moura e Sá, F., Cardoso, R. Finisterra, LX(130), 2025, e39141
9
complementary ways. First, from a policy and programing perspective, because it counters the
expansionist paradigm upon which urbanization processes have long relied by placing greater
emphasis on admissible construction for the networks that are currently in place. Second, because it
provides a quantified account of infrastructural provision and building patterns, which can help
streamline and enhance land use classification schemes that presently tend to be slow and ineffective,
thereby supporting and improving day-do-day planning practices. And finally, and perhaps most
importantly, because IvB can become a key reference to develop, reinforce, and rearticulate various
instruments of the Portuguese planning system: it can help establishing and implementing land use
plansii; it can facilitate processes of administrative licensingiii; it can be the foundation for new tax
policyiv; and it can serve to inform public initiativesv. In sum, by giving us a quantifiable measure of
both deficits and potentials installed in a particular network, IvB provide us with an infrastructure-
based metric to systematically inform urban planning practice in Portugal.
In 2025, a legal change was introduced, which, despite being surgical, questions the basic
assumptions that defend and promote the end of expansion as a necessary or dominant paradigm.
However, it is important to highlight that: as previously mentioned, this change was violently opposed
by Portuguese urban planners (which suggests that it will not have much impact); even in the face of
the change introduced, which simply and without foundation allows construction on rural land, the
IvB, by reinforcing the infrastructural dimension as the skeleton of occupation, can, even in this case,
be an important aid to qualify and support land use planning policies at a local level.
6. CONCLUSION: BEYOND POLITICAL SKILLS
One of the key takeaways from Urban and Regional Planning in an Age of Austerity (Clavel et al.,
1980) was that planners needed political skills for facing the changing context of their profession in
the US of the 1970s and 1980s. This is a both valid and valuable insight until today. Without a clear
formulation of its political and organizational role in society, specifically one that put emphasis on
democratic processes of decision making as well as the promotion of socially just urban forms,
planning will always be incapable of dealing with the political-economic demands of our contemporary
moment. The problem with this view of what planning is meant to do, however, is a tendency to neglect
the mundane technical aspects of actual planning practice. This is especially pronounced in the realm
of land use planning, and particularly in contexts where the geography of extended urbanization is
combined with institutional apathy and strategic drift.
This article contributes to offsetting this tendency. Both critical and propositional, it presents
an applied tool for retrieving the potential of land use planning in a general framework of shrinking
budgets for public investments. Fashioned in the ongoing aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis and
the subsequent onslaught of austerity that spread throughout much of Europe and North America, this
tool provides an opportunity to take full advantage of the structural and transformative power of
urban infrastructures.
i Expected usage loads are estimated by considering references associated with standard flows and behaviors, while service capacities are based on
specific parameters per function and the adoption of standard profiles organized according to their building potential.
ii In what concerns land use plans, IvB can help to set zoning and building standards as well as to refine public investment decisions in accordance with
actual infrastructural needs and conditions.
iii Regarding administrative licensing, IvB can facilitate the evaluation of private intentions according to the availability/capacity of the infrastructure
(although foreseen in the Portuguese legal framework, the lack of information and data on the allocation of infrastructures, causes this dimension to be
neglected in the process of issuing permits and licenses).
iv IvB can be the basis to define policies to stimulate action, or to promote the immobilization of the various economic agents, according to the need of
monetization the existing infrastructure.
v IvB allows to inform the public investments and actions in order to leverage strategies that can assure the use of the existing infrastructures and the
profiting of the investments that were already made (mitigating waste), as well as the correction of the most evident and significant overloads.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research for this article was carried out at the University of Aveiro and the University of Porto, within
the Research Unit on Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policies, and the Research Centre for
Moura e Sá, F., Cardoso, R. Finisterra, LX(130), 2025, e39141
10
Territory, Transport and Environment. The authors would like to thank both research centers, especially
Jorge Carvalho and Isabel Breda-Vázquez.
ORCID ID
Frederico Moura e Sá https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3660-2751
Ricardo Cardoso https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1514-1714
AUTHORS' CONTRIBUTIONS
Frederico Moura e Sá: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal Analysis,
Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing – original draft preparation, Visualization, Supervision,
Project Administration. Ricardo Cardoso: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal Analysis,
Investigation, Resources, Writing – original draft preparation, Writing – review and editing, Visualization,
Supervision, Project Administration.
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