The research acceleration projects in CiTUA Thematic Lines are projects designed for one year, which have as objectives:

1. To promote intra-CiTUA cooperation, creating synergies among the various researchers – integrated, collaborators and others – and their research interests;
2. To reinforce the scientific production and the public dissemination within the Thematic Line;
3. To provide solid bases for the expansion of research developed within this scope through a future submission to national or international funding;

Acronym: ROLE

Underlining the contribution of architecture/urban design to the construction of a new “narrative” to guide the creation of these platforms/infrastructures of non-formal learning, in distinct socio-economic and cultural contexts, the research has as central objectives: (a) reflection, identification and systematization of the challenges and demands that knowledge spaces face in the current political, social, environmental, cultural, demographic contexts, among others; (b) recognition of the educational dimension of built environments and public spaces, encouraging debate that will provoke reflection and the involvement of professionals, public entities, communities and society in general.

The research aims to explore different typologies of built spaces and urban/territorial spaces, analyzing their potential for educational practices, knowledge transfer, their value as educational opportunities, and their role as context, agent, and educational content. The approach focuses on the educational needs and expectations (formal, non-formal and informal) of different target audiences (compulsory education, extracurricular education, adult and senior education, lifelong education), considering socio-economic implications and contexts of permanence, temporality or unpredictability. The central motivation is to contribute to the (re)design of innovative, effective and meaningful educational environments, anchored in the values of a sustainable attitude at the social, environmental, economic and cultural levels.

Acronym: Lis|PIH

One of Lisbon’s cultural significance lies in the architectural and urban values of a substantial number of early modern residential buildings, “Lisbon pre-industrial housing” (PIH), that build-up urban consolidated areas of the inner city. In the last decades, these buildings have been submitted to demolitions and scattered refurbishment actions with negative impacts, driven by the real estate pressure, related to the growth of urban tourism and to the construction of new high standard residential buildings. Main consequences can be observed at the cultural, environmental and social levels: the loss of cultural significance of the built heritage within these areas, the increase of seismic vulnerability, the raise of materials/energy consumption and carbon emissions caused by demolitions and introduction of systems with high energy needs, the expulsion of residents due to the increased unaffordability of housing, reducing social cohesion in several neighbourhoods of Lisbon. This trend can and must be reversed.  In opposition to past recognition of vernacular/rural architecture in Portugal, PIH is still awaiting a systematised study, which responds to the urgent need for technical knowledge to better support rehabilitation and conservation actions. Lis|PIH follows the assumption that the adequate rehabilitation of the housing stock, by assuring high levels of material conservation, can lead to cultural heritage preservation and enhancement, environmental efficiency and circular economy and to the supply of affordable housing. To this end, Lis|PIH will be developed in the following major stages: SCOPE DEFINITION and SYSTEMATISATION, characterizing these building stock on a systematic and illustrated inquiry; DIAGNOSIS of potentialities and vulnerabilities of PIH focusing on cultural, constructive, environmental and housing values, supported by the use of assessment methodologies and data basis on a set of representative case studies submitted to assessment; DISSEMINATION of results and RECOMMENDATIONS for public policy and urban governance.

Acronym: reHAB

reHAB proposes to investigate the built environment, design and construction processes considering all the participants from architects to politicians and inhabitants. The research addresses rehabilitation, renovation and reuse as actions for a sustainable decarbonized circular design regarding the inheritance of a built world. As underlying action, knowledge on the existent-built environment in mandatory, the reading and understanding of the built legacy is crucial for its transformation and adaptation towards the contemporary demands of comfort, security, safety, wellbeing addressing climate crisis and the human body that emerges from that urgency. Depicting and interpreting modern housing buildings the investigation of the Habitat engages the understanding of collective housing and the domestic space in a holistic approach where public areas are considered signifying for the contemporary reflection on the renewal of local communities’ strengths. Contemporary resilient healthy neighborhoods must address design and social porosity in order to achieve a timeless lesson from vernacular architecture, where the awareness of climate conditions together with the acknowledgment of social sciences built a humanized balanced sustainability. The world has changed and it is mandatory to filing the gap of the massification of modern construction in a moment of history where the housing crisis, the housing models research and the recognition of the quality of public space are here again. Simultaneously, climate challenges are calling us towards the maintenance of civilization, as we know it. Therefore, reHAB proposes to be a contribution where heritage is engaged as cradle for innovative sustainable communities crucial for the future.

Acronym: Fire-B-aware

Fire-B-aware intends to investigate the wildfire risk perception and preparedness amongst school children and their families in Portugal. To do so, two main objectives were established to guide the development of the project:

• Understand how middle school students living in Portugal perceive wildfire risk, how they are prepared to respond to wildfire risk events and how their attitudes and behaviours shape their preparedness.
• Understand which is the middle school student’s families perception of wildfire risk mitigation in the scope of spatial planning.

One type of questionnaire will be conducted to collect the required data for each of these objectives. The first questionnaire will be applied to the 7th grade middle school students within the class of citizenship and considering a representative sample of 4 schools per district of the mainland Portugal (expected N = 3600 students). This sample of 4 schools per district intends to collect data on students in all of the following 4 situations: being in a fire risk area with previous fire event experience; being in a fire risk area without previous fire event experience; being in a non-fire risk area but having a previous fire event experience; being in a non-fire risk area and having no previous fire event experience. The second questionnaire, to be applied to the families of the 7th grade middle school students, will be delivered to the students in the citizenship class so it can be answered at home by their relatives. A digital version of this questionnaire will also be prepared attempting to reach a wider sample of data. As Fire-B-aware outputs, it is expected to submit two papers in scientific journals, to present communications in international conferences, to develop a guide for schools rising awareness on this subject and to organize a seminar on wildfire risk perception.

Acronym: TRAGOF

Forests are complex territories involving multiple interactions between social and ecological systems that affect each other, influencing and being influenced by the social, economic and political context. Non-natural forest fires represent “pathologies” that usually result from a complex dynamic of problematic interactions in social-forestry systems, that have been occurring over time in Portugal. To address this complexity and the non-linearity and uncertainties inherent to forest fire risk management, a transformative approach in the forest governance model is being sought. This approach can be understood as a key strategy to reverse the unsustainable patterns of use and management of forest territories connected to the current increasing trend of severe fire events in Portugal. Monchique (case study) is located in southern Portugal and has extensive areas classified as “very high” risk of forest fires and has therefore been classified by the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF) as a priority intervention area for Forest Fire Defence (DFCI, 2021). An expected outcome of the research is a critical and in-depth analysis of the current forest governance structure in Monchique, an identification of constraints and opportunities, as well as possible strategies to guide a transformative governance approach of fire risk forest territories. Such results will be consolidated and presented to stakeholders, scientific community and society in general through a scientific publication (paper), communications at Conferences and the dissemination of a Roadmap to enable its replication in others fire-prone forest in Portugal, Europe and elsewhere.

Acronym: CidadeTejo

The challenges posed by climate change and, in particular, the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the present decade (2020-2030), designated by the United Nations as the “Decade of Action”, make evident the need and urgency of new paradigms of transformation at the level of the planning process and governance systems. In this sense, this project has as its first objective to develop a critical diagnosis concerning the Tagus estuary waterfront, in order to identify: (i) the urban dynamics that led to the current land uses; (ii) the main characteristics and features that these territories present, particularly with regard to opportunities and threats to sustainable development and response to hydrological risks; (iii) the visions and strategies that integrate the different instruments with spatial incidence on these territories, analyzing their effectiveness as instruments of urban transformation, their internal coherence and also their spatial and temporal articulation with other IGT, programs and projects.

Acronym: Território.justo.pt

The Território.justo.pt project aims to be a transdisciplinary knowledge production exercise that applies the concept of spatial justice in its complexity to the reality of Portugal, on a municipal basis. This work focuses, firstly, on the most relevant dimensions that explain the territorial asymmetries and, secondly, on the possibilities of mitigating them through the implementation of public policies or others, using the rationale (objectives, targets, indicators) present in the Sustainable Development Goals 10 and 11 of the Urban Agenda 2030. The diversity of the team, consisting of CiTUA integrated researchers and collaborators, but supported by consultants from external research centers and also by experts linked to the different fields identified as key, will give a broader dimension to this research.

The purpose of the Erasmus+ SEA ASIA programme is to strengthen cooperation between the universities in the EU (Denmark, Portugal and Sweden) and Southeast Asia (Bangladesh, Laos and Vietnam) and strengthen the capacity of universities to carry out high-quality higher education in strategic environmental assessment (SEA).

The housing theme (re)emerges in the political and mediatic agendas as one of the main global priorities, as shown by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development or the Urban Agenda for
the European Union (2016), reflecting a world housing crisis. Whatever the specificities of each context, this symptom results from the consolidation of global housing financialization process.
More than a human right, housing tends to be read as a commodity and a financial asset, hindering access to adequate housing for an increasing part of the urban population and, consequently, worsening its general housing conditions. Considering the current urban scenario, the European Union announced in 2017 a future Agenda for Housing, underlying the necessity of a better articulation between the European policies and the housing policies of its member states. In Portugal, the government launched a New Generation of Housing Policies (2018) and it defends the universal access to adequate housing, through the ‘First Right’ – Housing Access Support Program (Decree-Law no. 37/2018), engaged to resolve the housing precarity in the country. Unlike its predecessor, this program presents a broad sense of habitat and a wide range of housing solutions based on integrated and participatory approaches. Following this inflexion, this research proposes a critical and reflexive lecture of the processes and projects carried out in the scope of the ‘First Right’ program, evaluating their contribution to a more spatial justice, from the policies and projects developed, to their implementation and space appropriation. It aims to inform more inclusive and sustainable policies and practices committed to universal access to an adequate housing, at the European and national levels, in line with at least two goals of the 2030 Agenda: 10. ‘Reduce inequality within and among countries’; 11. ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. Given these goals and targets assumed, the proposed research could contribute to: new ways to read, plan and project housing models and typologies; new theoretical and methodological frameworks in light of the spatial justice; underline innovative and sustainable urban housing solutions.

“Siza Barroco” é um projecto de investigação que visa pôr em evidência a relação entre a ideia de Barroco e a obra de Álvaro Siza. O que com este projecto se pretende é, justamente, pôr à prova esta possibilidade interpretativa que, a nosso ver, trará ganhos de conhecimento consideráveis na compreensão: do método de projecto de Siza, do seu percurso ao longo do tempo, do metamorfosear da sua obra ao longo desse tempo e da própria metamorfose dos seus projectos. Cientes de que a colocação lado-a-lado da ideia de Barroco e da arquitectura de Álvaro Siza trará também ganhos de conhecimento do lado da revelação do que é afinal o Barroco, cremos, igualmente, que a investigação programada será uma ocasião particularmente fecunda para compreendermos mais e melhor o que tem sido descrito, com certa relutância do autor, enquanto “o génio de Siza”. Desdobrar – à maneira de Deleuze – a obra arquitectónica de Siza e procurar, primeiro, observá-la e, depois, dá-la a ver através de uma lente barroca é o objectivo primeiro e último da investigação proposta.

The interactions between people and their surroundings play an important role in the construction of their identities. We know the landscape we live in, we interact with it daily and in doing so, we make it our home. Feeling at home in our surroundings plays an important role in our quality of life. People sometimes struggle severely with being displaced when for example peoples’ landscape is being turned into a nature area or when people have to flee their home due to war. Even when people voluntarily migrate, it often proves a struggle to settle in their new surroundings. The places in which people have lived previously, shape how they are connected to the landscape they live in. Migrants for example often value features in the landscape which remind them of their home. Also, people’s cultural background and values shared with the local community have an impact on how they perceive and value their surroundings. Major differences between how migrants and natives view their landscape can contribute to segregation. This research will, therefore, address these issues, investigating differences in how migrants and natives identify with the local landscape and trying to uncover underlying factors that influence the effects of migration on people’s landscape identity. This research project is divided into four different phases: participatory landscape character assessment, focus groups, surveys, and in-depth interviews. These steps will be applied in rural and urban areas in both Belgium and Portugal to understand the processes of landscape identity formation across different contexts.

The overall objective of TRUST is to explore the enabling conditions for sustainability transition(ST) initiatives, the extent to which such transitions support social innovation (SI) and the role of SI in generating transformative change, through actors’ networks and agents of change. The key research ideas build on ongoing research projects that explore the transformative potential of ST(eg TRANSIT,ARTS,GUST,TESS,SINGOCOM or TURAS). Social learning and innovation are important factors in transformative process for building social-ecological resilience [WeAn10],[West13]. In TRUST focus is on ST initiatives, supported by SI, that drive transformative change in social-ecological systems(SES). The long-term target is to contribute to create locally based networks for ST and SI strategies to enable change in approaches, routines, practices and mind-sets to create transformation for sustainable driven societies.

The project deals with forms of socio-urbanistic and housing intervention in the urban margins of African cities of Lusotopie, in the new millennium, focusing on those that contribute to improving the quality of inhabit and the sustainability of habitat of low-income groups. In the current context of accelerated urbanisation, globalisation and increasing socio-spatial inequalities, inscribed in the neoliberal paradigm, it is urgent to reflect on the impact of such interventions, as well as on how to construct a more inclusive habitat and on how and what to do to reinforce them. Luanda and Maputo, with similar structural constraints, are taken as case studies.

The general aim of this project is to study the transformations in Siza’s collective housing over the past 5 decades, focusing on the linked analysis of: a) the projects (social and private housing) and the respective social and urban condition framework; and b) their residents and the relationships they develop with the projected space. The research follows an intensive methodology: comparative study of 3 Siza’s cases/collective housing projects. Each represents a moment on the architect’s professional life and corresponds to a moment in the life of society and the city; the 3 together, and their temporal sequence, represent (part of) Siza’s trajectory and that of contemporary society and of the city. The cases are: 1. Bouça/Porto – started following the 1974 revolution. Symbolising the Revolution, Architecture and the Right to the City when it was in decay; 2. Terraços de Bragança – Chiado, Lisboa, started in the 1990s. Symbolising the national real estate boom, modernization launch and procrastination of urban renaissance; 3. Building 611 West 56th Street – Hell’s Kitchen, New York, began in the 2010s. Symbolising hyper-globalisation, the rise of the city, financialisation of real estate and the incontestability of the value of architectural authorship. The greatest innovation in the proposal is in the temporal sequence of the 3 cases, which allows us to answer the following questions: what has changed in the production and appropriation of Siza’s houses and how do these changes relate to social transformations and the architect’s career? Who promoted the housing at the different times, locations, to what end and for whom? What are the formal, functional and contextual differences/similarities between the projects? How have transformations in the urban context impacted on the occupation of dwelling in social, use and value terms? What is the social profile of residents, their evolution and differences between cases? How do these residents live in Siza’s houses? Why do they choose to live in Siza-Pritzker houses, and what does it mean?

BRIDGE is an action-research project aimed at developing an approach to integrate different forms of knowledge and action in order to reduce wildifre risk. Local populations are not mere repositories of information from generalist information campaigns. Rather, they hold experiential knowledge that should be crosschecked with scientific information for a more detailed risk assessment. In the action plan, rural fire risk mitigation measures need to be incorporated into local governance logics and the daily routines of forest users.
At the methodological level, the development of this integrated approach will be implemented through a participatory-action research (PAR) applied to a specific territory, Monchique region. Participatory action research is understood as a process by which science and scientists, regional and local governance agencies, decision-makers and public officials, communities and local leaders cooperate with the dual objective of: i) assessing the vulnerabilities and resources of their territory; and ii) identifying the various risk reduction alternatives. This local involvement is a way to build knowledge with the community, raise wildfire risk awareness and foster a more enduring commitment with wildfire risk reduction policy. BRIDGE’s
participatory action research will be applied to a pre-selected pilot-area, Monchique region, and will comprise two major moments: one of participatory socio-territorial diagnosis and a local capacity-building process embodied in the form of a collaborative laboratory. The activities developed in the collaborative laboratory of BRIDGE (Innovation Lab for CBDRR) will be materialized through the adoption of collaborative methodologies, namely the participatory mapping. The involvement between local communities, local/regional technicians and scientists will occur through the construction of a local scaled map where relevant elements for wildfire risk management, such as socio-ecological vulnerabilities, local resources and capacities, will be identified. This map will subsequently be adapted to digital format so that it can be used for other purposes, such as spatial planning and wider public awareness.The development of BRIDGE will be ensured by a consortium of three institutions, respectively the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), coordinator of the project, the Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC), and the University of Algarve (UAlg).

The aim of the SPHERA Erasmus + proposal is to facilitate interdisciplinary studies in health engineering and related areas with a focus on improving existing conditions and in-depth knowledge of how to use medical equipment, deliver effective modern sanitation and other public health interventions in urban and rural areas in low-income and transitional economies. The project will build as well capacities that may reduce disaster risks and contribute to better and more targeted public health based relief following disasters. Through the creation of multidisciplinary postgraduate programs in Nepal and Uzbekistan, following the Bologna model (competence-based approach, learning outcomes and compatible with ECTS), the structure of the programs will lead to comparable degrees that will allow mutual recognition and increased students and teaching staff mobility. The partner Universities will be assisted by the EU Institutions to achieve this goal. A series of compulsory modules will develop teachers’ and students’ knowledge and skills in a range of areas.
They will able to gain an understanding of the wider issues surrounding public health and how they impact on policy and practice. The ultimate goal of the project is to prepare a new generation of specialist engineers and technicians who will have major positive effects in both the health technology industry sector and the public health system through the appropriate management of emergency situations and safe use of medical technology.

Funding: European Union Erasmus+ Programme
Duration: 2016-2019

The Observatory is a platform for the aggregation, development and divulgation of studies and data on urban mobility, road safety, and road user behaviour patterns, sponsered by the Portuguese Automobile Clube (ACP). Its consulting body is composed by the main entities with responsibilities in the sector, such as the Mobility and Transports Institute, Taxi and public transport organizations, highway operators, police forces, , road safety authorities, the National Infrastructures Company, and sectoral NGOs such as bycicle associations and environmental NGOs. Prof. Fernando Nunes da Silva is the scientific coordinator. The Observatory has conducted studies on the profile of portuguese drivers, the current situation of road safety, and mobility in Lisbon’s central axis.

Funding: Portuguese Automobile Club (ACP)
Duration: 2017-
https://observatorio.acp.pt/

This is an ongoing H2020 funded project with the duration of 4 years starting in 2017. The aim of the project is to challenge the dichotomy of urban and rural spaces where urban is associated to innovation and consumption while the countryside remains a place for food production, nature conservation and recreation. As the stereotype holds the differences are blurring. This project aims to understand what are communalities and conflicts in order to move forwards in bringing out synergies and new development models. The partnership includes the following institutions: Aberystwyth University (UK), Baltic Studies Centre (Latvia), ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, European Secretariat (Germany),  Natural Resources Institute Finland (Finland), OIKOS – Development Consulting (Slovenia), Peri-Urban Regions Platform Europe (Belgium), Policy Research Consultancy (Germany), University of Gloucestershire – Countryside and Community Research Institute (UK), University of Lisbon – Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal), University of Pisa (Italy), University of Valencia (Spain), Wageningen University (The Netherlands) and Federal Institute for Mountainous and Less-Favoured Areas (Austria).

The participation in this project links into the findings of the PERIURBAN project lead by IST/CERIS and into the work developed in the context of COLEGIO F3 of the University of Lisbon.

Funding:

European Union Horizon 2020 Programme

Duration:

2017 – 2021

rural-urban.eu

Municipal Education Plans provide the blueprint for the management and planning of education facilities. It takes into account existing structures, current supply-and-demand patterns, and projects future needs based on cohort survival population estimates.
In the current context of decentralization of education, from the central administration onto municipalities, there is an added incentive to produce updated and thourough evaluations of the current system’s preformance and expected resilience in facing of shifting demographics.
Cascais Municipality, in Lisbon’s Metropolitan Area, tasked Instituto Superior Técnico with the creation of a Strategica Plan for Education, which included a series of public meetings with stakeholders and community involvement efforts.
The final document then served as a guide for the subsequent revision of the Municipal Education Plan.
Both projects were developed in close cooperation with the municipality’s Education Council and education department.

Funding: Municipality of Cascais

Duration: 2016-2018

RMB is focused on the refurbishment of the existing housing stock, as well as conversion from other building typologies such as warehouses, offices and public building with special focus on the post WW2 modern era. The goal is to initiate an educational framework of common definitions, approaches and methodologies on a European level, based on existing research, educational practices and reference projects in the program countries and associated states. The follow up is a Joint Master program on reuse, offered by a consortium of five European universities.
Project Partners: HS OWL, Detmold School for Architecture and Interior Architecture – Germany (Applicant);ITU, Department of Architecture –Turkey ULisboa, Instituto Superior Técnico –Portugal; Universidade de Coimbra, Faculty of Science and Technology – Portugal; University of Antwerp, Faculty of Design Sciences –Belgium; DOCOMOMO International –Portugal and associate partner ´the energy and resources institute´ (TERI) – New Dehli, India.

Funding:

European Union Erasmus + Programme
Duration: 2016-

www.rmb-eu.com

This is a continuing line of collaborations with government institutions and municipalities in the field of public procurement and the definition of evaluation criteria for public contracting and public-private partnerships.
The new “Sintra proximity hospital” intends to partially relieve the overcrowded Amadora Sintra-Hospital. The study, conducted in collaboration with the municipality of Sintra, aims at defining objective and transparent criteria for the selection of the winning bid.
The Central Administration of the National Health Service (ACSS) tasked the group with a similar study, concerning the public procurement associated with the new “Hospital Lisboa Oriental”, including a second stage of revision after the project was relaunched recently.
The group also collaborated in a study on the location of the new Oeste Region Hospital.

Coordinator of “Consultadoria especializada em contratação pública no âmbito dos concursos públicos necessários à execução do Programa Renda Acessível” (Municipality of Lisbon).
Lisbon’s Accessible Rent Program aims at providing affordable housing within the Municipality of Lisbon. Recent trends in tourism, and the international context, have led to a significant increase in the average price, and a reduction in the available pool, of houses in central locations. Prof. Antunes Ferreira has helped the Municipality in setting-up a system of public-private partnership where the municipality provides the land, the private promoter builds, manages and maintains new housing stock, with a significant part being rent-controlled. The promoter receives the income from renting for a set period and, as the concession period experis, the municipality receives back the buildings. The program, initiated last year, is already concluding the first concession contracts and is expected to generate 6.400 units with affordable rent from a total of 9.000 new dwellings.

Funding: Municipality of Lisbon

http://www.lisboarendaacessivel.pt/en/home.html

This research focuses on health promotion through prophylactic and therapeutic spaces of Health and Well-being Bathing Facilities (HWBF) and their urban transitions as a key space for the resilience of CTS. The sun and beach tourism product is currently facing the vulnerability of ultraviolet radiation exposure and the increasing temperatures related with heat waves. It is grounded on architectural morphology innovation, and aims to identify positive and negative spatial components and requalification strategies in the CTS and HWTS. It follows a methodology based on post-occupancy evaluation aiming to identify morphological rules concerning the user’s satisfaction.
The research fits within the Horizon 2020 programme’s challenge of health and well-being, combined with the research priority of climate change.
It is argued that the assemblage of coastal tourism and health and well-being tourism is of strategic importance for Portugal, a country with the potential of becoming an inclusive health and well-being tourism destination, combining the coastal talasso bathing with the existing mineral springs on the continent and islands.

Funding: FCT (SFRH/BPD/94371/2013)
Duration: 2013-

This project, for the University of Lisbon Administration and the Municipality of Lisbon, is focused on creating a cohesive and well-structure network of public spaces, regulate motorized traffic, and provide guidelines for the correct integration of future building within the site.
The plan’s intervention area is composed essentially of the University of Lisbon’s central Campus. The space is characterized by monofunctional spaces with very seasonal uses, but also by heavy through-traffic that crosses the heart of the Campus, generating pedestrian-vehicular traffic conflicts. The public space lacks coherence and legibility, as interventions from different decades failed to uphold the original vision for the complex.
After a prolonged characterization and strategy stage, the plan has now moved into the proposal stage. In articulation with the the University’s Administration, the Municipality, and the different faculties, the plan establishes a cohesive system of public open spaces, that promotes soft mobility and the integration of the Campus’ existing buildings, as well as proposed extensions.
The street network is interveened so as to moderate traffic and create a set of sections where priority is given to pedestrians.
Surface parking is virtually eliminated, being replaced partially by the creation and expansion of underground parking structures.

Funding: Rectorate of the University of Lisbon
http://www.cm-lisboa.pt/viver/urbanismo/planeamento-urbano/planos-de-urbanizacao/planos-de-urbanizacao-em-elaboracao/elaboracao-do-plano-de-urbanizacao-da-cidade-universitaria

The revision of Sines’ Municipal Master Plan is an ongoing project for the Municipality of Sines (Southern Portugal).
The specificity of this municipality, host to Portugal’s largest deep-water port and an important industrial center, makes it an interesting case-study in the balancing and integration of social, economic, and environmental concerns within a relatively small territory.
With the characterization phase concluded, the project has now entered the proposal stage.
For the proposal, the Instituto Superior Técnico team has collaborated with the Municipality in defining and applying new methodologies for land-use classification based on digital land-use data, defining rural settlement limits, and revise the ecological and agricultural reserves.

Funding: Municipality of Sines
http://www.sines.pt/pages/650

Tomar’s Municipal Master Plan first revision is an ongoing project for the Municipality of Tomar (Central Portugal).
Tomar’s first municipal master plan dates back to 1994. The Instituto Superior Técnico team was sellected by the municipality to coordinate the first revision of the master plan. This long process has gone through a preliminary strategy stage, a full characterization of the municipality’s current issues and, more recently, the final proposal stage. The plan’s revision has now entered its final stage, as the involved entities reconcile planning decisions and legal standards immediately before the plan’s final approval.
The plan’s revision is a complex, multidisciplinary enterprise, that has yielded interesting outcomes related to new methodologies for urban perimeter delimitation, the evaluation of municipal property taxation, or the definition of the municipality’s ecological network.

Funding: Municipality of Tomar
http://www.cm-tomar.pt/index.php/educar/planos-ordenamento-territorio#revis%C3%A3o-pdm

IN_LEARNING focuses on active learning environments (ALE) in the framework of secondary and higher education. ALE corresponds to high performance learning settings, i.e. spaces designed to suit new approaches to learning and teaching beyond those typical of structured classes of standardized duration with breaks in between, in a way to facilitate student-centered and collaborative learning, to promote and foster informal contacts and continuous learning experiences to their students.
IN_LEARNING research was concentrated on the formulation of a theoretical framework between the relations of the design of learning facilities and the way people learn in formal and informal modes; the survey and assessment of ALE, concerning formal and informal modes of learning; and the development of a specific space-use analysis tool (SUA), based on the exploration of video technology for images in motion. Video data is crossover with “Space Syntax” models. Emerging spatial patterns of space-use and knowledge-sharing are identified by combining spatial description with the motion graphics and post processing analysis.

Funding: FCT (PTDC/CS-GEO/1010836/2008)
Duration: 2010-2013
http://in-learning.ist.utl.pt/

Land use and land cover change (LUCC) is a topic of major importance at global, national and regional levels, due to the impacts it can cause in ecological, environmental and socio-economic systems.
The main objectives of this project were:
(1) to provide a reliable and clear picture of the changes that occurred in land use and land cover (LULC) in Continental Portugal, in the decades 1980s, 1990s and 2010s;
(2) to identify and understand the major driving forces of those changes;
(3) to form the main alternative scenarios of LUCC until 2040, using a spatial model; and
(4) to use all this LUCC information to study energy demand and Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions and removals.
The first main challenge in LANDYN comes from the characterisation of LULC and LUCC in a large area and in three moments in time. To address this challenge an approach based on spatial probabilistic sampling was adopted, using a stratified sampling for estimating LUCC. Then the base LULC maps were derived through visual interpretation of aerial photography. At the estimation stage, instead of using the usual Horvitz-Thompson estimator, more complex estimators were investigated (e.g. ratio estimators). Identifying LUCC driving forces in Continental Portugal LANDYN also bring some innovative aspects:
(1) the use of self-organising map, a data mining technique, to deal with the high dimensional facet of the driving forces dataset;
(2) combine this data mining approach with a qualitative analysis based on circumstantial evidences and inferential reasoning, as a means to address the difficulty to analyse and represent driving forces.

Funding: FCT (PTDC/CS-GEO/101836/2008)
Duration: 2010-2014

Lx LAB project raised up due to the importance of monitoring as a process of evaluation in continuum in the validation of strategies for the sustainable development of the city.
The project intents to understand how to structure a tool for evaluation (monitoring) in continuum the tourism and its impacts in the historical center of a city. The project has the following main goals:
1. Identification of the main urban, economic, environmental and social impacts of tourism in historic centers;
2. Identification of the main indicators for monitoring tourism and its impacts in historic centers;
3. Clarification of the purpose of monitoring: Monitor for what? For whom? Who is monitoring?
4. Identification of the necessary information for the monitoring of tourism and its impacts; characterization of the type of information, data existence and its suitability; identification of the methods and entities (current and potential) responsible for its production and updating.
5. Identification of solutions that allow in continuum evaluation of tourism and its impacts on historic centers in their different dimensions (urban, economic, environmental and social) and the availability of information to the society.
It is needed an integrated long-term planning and management approach to maximize positive impacts and minimize the negative impacts of tourism, faced with a recurrent reality defined by the development of public policies almost exclusively reactive.
Thus, it is intended to understand how an in continuum evaluation tool can be structured to contribute to the monitoring of tourism and its impacts in the historical center of a city. For this purpose, the historical Alfama’s neighborhood, in the center of Lisbon, was selected as case study.
It is assumed that this monitoring tool should be managed by the local authority, to effectively contribute to the definition of municipal policies that promote sustainable development of the city. On the other hand, it is intended that this tool encourages the participation of citizens, namely in updating the information, taking advantage in some cases of applications running on mobile devices.

Funding: Ceris/IST
Duration: 2018

The strong relationship between tourism growth and urban rehabilitation in historic centres has led to a development of research’s focused on assessing the impacts of tourism on urban regeneration, particularly at the level of the economic and social components. However, the study of the consequences that the growth of tourism has on the built-up, as well as the integrated analysis between the intervention in the built-up and the dynamics of the housing market and demographic are small.
It is in this context that this research is developed, whose objective is to understand the dynamics of transformation at the level of land use, building, real estate market and population in a historical neighbourhood. For this purpose, the Alfama neighbourhood was selected in Lisbon.
It is also objective of this research project to analyse the context in which these transformations occurred, that is, what effects the public policies of territorial planning, tourism, urban rehabilitation and housing had on the physical changes of the neighbourhood and if its objectives were achieved.
(Funded by “Ações Exploratórias Transversais, CERIS 2017”; Instituto Superior Técnico, CERIS– Centro de Engenharia Civil, Investigação e Inovação para a Sustentabilidade).

Funding: Ceris/IST
Duration: 2017-2018

In 2008 the municipality of Almada started the process for the first review of its Municipal Master Plan (PDM), which had been approved by the municipal council in 1993 and ratified by the Government in 1997. In this process, the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) has participated with an interdisciplinary team of consultants, developing technical studies in different areas that allowed the City Council to build up strategies of development, reflected in the model of spatial planning and in the development of land-use plan and respective regulation.
A methodology to define the territorial development has also been carried out by IST, which implied the auscultation of the population through public participation sessions, workshops and one congress. This long and exhausting process sought to learn what were the main problems, opportunities and resources of the municipality, which were the basis to define the strategic lines and objectives of the PDM review.
After characterization studies round, IST also developed a wide range of studies to the municipality, among which are the definition of consolidated urban areas, the demographic projections until 2031, the study of equipment and the urban expansion gap, as well as the preliminary definition of the urban perimeters.
From 2016, with a revamped team constituted by the researchers listed below, it was developed the Territorial Model that preceded the preliminary proposal for the reviewed master plan and the draft of the land use regulation.
Other reports on different fields were developed by IST, in order to assist in the conception of the final report of the master plan. Among these are the reports in the fields of the participatory process and territorial identity, mobility, accessibility and transportation, landscape units and the strategic municipal ecological structure, as well as the report on the municipal financial availabilities.

Funding: Municipality of Almada
http://www.m-almada.pt/xportal/xmain?xpid=cmav2&xpgid=genericMenuContent&menu_title_generic_qry=BOUI=325617047&menu_generic_qry=BOUI=325617047&genericContentPage_qry=BOUI=325624467&actualmenu=325617047

The main challenge in this project (2012-2015, funded by FCT) was to investigate the application of equity in land use planning, particularly in the urbanization process, and how to overcome the lack of effectiveness of the instruments provided in the Portuguese legislation for achieving it, namely the land readjustment (LR) instruments. Not only institutional factors concerned with the legal framework of the planning process itself were analyzed and assessed, but also the economic and financial factors embedded in urban planning were considered. In the end of this investigation, with a deeper knowledge regarding the national and international practice on LR, it would be of interest to proceed with the testing and calibration for the proposed model components, relating them with several intervention typologies. A bigger attention should be given to urban rehabilitation operations which, in Portugal as in other European countries, will henceforth become the most frequent urban interventions and which present specific challenges both regarding management as well as financing.

Funding: FCT (PTDC/AUR-URB/120509/2010)
Duration: 2012-2015
http://projectopercom.tecnico.ulisboa.pt

EWV studied the architecture built in Africa “Lusófona”, mostly in Angola and Mozambique, during the modern movement period in his possible continuity more or less explicit with the reference constituted by the Brazilian production. This research found an important contribution in the knowledge as it concentrated on both the survey of the existing building types and the development of a technological know-how. The methodology established a set of criteria for the selection and description of buildings and urban spaces. Research integrated different information sources (bibliography, archives and direct observation), through the elaboration of new drawings of the selected works, describing them from the site description up to the technological detail. Those drawings were then used for the construction of all the possible specific interpretative essays. Research outputs include a book, an Online Database – Website; an International Conference: “EWV_Exchanging Worlds Visions”, Escola de Arquitectura da Universidade do Minho, Guimarães, 7-8 December 2012 and a International Workshop: “(re)USAR O MODERNO – Identificar / Documentar / Conservar”, Faculdade de Arquitectura e Planeamento Físico da Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique, 26-30 March 2012

Funding: FCT (PTDC/AUR-AQI/103229/2008)
Duration: 2010-2013
http://ewv1.ist.utl.pt

The goal is to study healthcare buildings from 20th century and their role in the welfare society policy, approaching future challenges driven by the developments in technology and medicine, and the need to assure a sustainable built environment (ToKiKi14). Responding to health necessities, health care buildings are a guarantee of civilization. Subject to permanent alterations, in the context of the society transformations, these buildings will be transformed, deactivated or even demolish in a near future. In the last 50 years poverty and famine have declined whereas healthcare, education and emancipation have improved significantly worldwide. All this was possible due to modernity’s devotion to innovations in science and technology. Yet this striking progress has created incredibly damaging effects as well. The effort to renew the world with pre-existing structures goes against the devotion to the constant new, which is still dominating our behavior. The relevance has to do with the developing of a meaningful knowledge for a responsible practice of planning and design addressing environment and cultural sustainable concerns. It will be a significant contribution to knowledge in the healthcare buildings and its rehabilitation, as it concentrates on both the survey of the existing building types and the development of a technological Know-How as well as considering conservation and rehabilitation strategies.

Funding: FCT (PTDC/AUR-AQI/2577/2014)
Duration: 2017-2020