social justice as a guide to planning theory and practice: analyzing the portuguese planning system

Social Justice as a Guide to PlanningTheory and Practice: Analyzing thePortuguese Planning System

RICARDO CARDOSO and ISABEL BREDA-VÁZQUEZ

AbstractThe first utilizations of social justice theory as a guide to planning theory and practicewere founded on David Harvey’s attempt to incorporate issues of redistributive justiceinto geographical methods of analysis. Later conceptualizations utilize Iris MarionYoung’s view of social justice as an institutional condition that enables participation andovercomes oppression and domination through the achievement of self-development andself-determination. These two conceptual paths create a constructive argumentativetension that should underlie contemporary spatial planning in democratic societies. Thismeans that, in order to contribute to more socially just urban societies, planning needsto be focused not only on patterns of distribution, but also on the relational socialstructures and institutional contexts in which these come about. Comprehensive andfunctionalist, mainstream planning in Portugal is unmistakably situated within themodernist planning project. We argue that the normative disposition of the identifiedargumentative tension undermines the theoretical capacity of modernist practices toachieve socially just territories. The aim of this article is to study the validity of thisargument by analyzing the Portuguese planning system against a twofold set of socialjustice criteria.

Introduction‘Portugal’s geography is changing’ (Sá Marques, 2004: 9). Over the last five decadesPortuguese society has gone through profound transformations with unquestionableconsequences for the territory (Barreto, 2000). Reflecting ongoing processes of socialsegmentation and spatial differentiation, the territorial system is both spatiallyheterogeneous and socially imbalanced. Indeed, notwithstanding being under pressure tofind a place in the global networks of power, the reality inside the country is one ofgrowing fragmentation between cities and regions (Barreto, 2000; Ferrão, 2002a, 2000b;Sá Marques, 2004). At the same time, the main urban areas are increasingly affected bysevere problems of urban deprivation, social vulnerability and socio-spatial segregation(Gaspar et al., 1998; Malheiros, 2000; Salgueiro, 2001; Breda-Vázquez et al., 2004;Pereira, 2005). However, despite these multiscale geographies of inequality, mainstreamplanning in Portugal is essentially understood as a technical instrument of a supposedlyneutral state, which aspires at comprehensiveness and value-free objectivity in territorialinterventions and therefore resists any type of normative thinking.

As Harvey (1973: 11) has pointed out, this ‘tendency to regard facts as separate fromvalues’ flows out of an ‘artificial separation of methodology from philosophy’. In fact, ‘as

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. The authorsare entirely responsible for any remaining shortcomings in this article.

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soon as we raise issues like spatial inequality and its social, economic and politicalconsequences, the normative dimension [of geography] becomes clear’ (Lee and Smith,2004: 1). This means that moral values are always involved in the making of a territory,and therefore that spatial planners need to position themselves in terms of how thatterritory should be (Corubolo, 1998; Lee and Smith., 2004). In this matter, it is our beliefthat social justice, as ‘the bedrock of any democratic society’ (Merrifield andSwyngedouw, 1996: 1), should constitute the normative guiding principle of planningtheory and practice.

In the Portuguese context, this position can also provide a rather pertinent lens forinterpreting and rethinking the planning system in relation to the identified spatialinequalities. Consequently, the aim of this article is to analyze the Portuguese planningsystem according to a set of social justice criteria. Theoretically constructed on the basisof selected literature, this set of criteria substantiates an interpretative framework forrethinking spatial planning and, in particular, evaluating the quality of the planningsystem as a whole by examining its core institutional arrangements. That evaluation isthe main objective of this article, and central to it are questions of the history andideology of the planning system. So, after building an evaluative framework, weundertake a consistent critical description of the system’s evolution and draw a set ofconclusions from it.

Main theoretical endeavors: building an evaluative frameworkThe meaning of social justice can be very diverse. As ‘an expression of different viewsof the world and hence of different sets of normative tools to act within it’ (Corubolo,1998: 1), social justice is ‘something contingent upon the social processes operating insociety as a whole’ (Harvey, 1973: 15). Consequently, theoretical debates on issues ofsocial justice and the city inevitably operate within argumentative tensions betweendissimilar views of urban development and planning.

Stepping beyond liberal egalitarianism, one of these tensions follows the fracturesopened by two of most important studies on social justice explicitly directed at the city(Smith, 2002): David Harvey’s (1973) Social Justice and the City and Iris MarionYoung’s (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference. The former appeared in the 1970sand constituted one of the foundations of a Marxist tradition of urban structuralistanalysis — what has been termed the political economy approach to planning. The latteris at the heart of more recent (1980/90s) preoccupations with difference and culturalissues in the city, which have built up a postmodernist approach to planning. Drawing oneach of these traditions, two contemporary views of the city are grounded on a principleof social justice: on the side of the political economists, Susan Fainstein (1996; 2001;2003; 2005) sketches a vision of the just city; from a postmodernist point of view, LeonieSandercock (1998a; 1998b) draws a path towards cosmopolis. Most significantly, as itwill be pointed out, both these views of the city construct a crucial position ofcompromise within the identified argumentative tension.

From political economy to the just city

The emphasis of the Marxist tradition of urban analysis in the 1970s was on the role ofcapital and ‘the importance of the connection between class relations and the builtenvironment in the understanding of urban planning’ (McDougall, 1982: 259). The focusof the political economy approach is then on economic relations in the city and itsobjective is to evaluate urban development ‘in terms of a transcendent goal of economicequality’ (Fainstein, 1996: 20) through substantive investigations on the geographicalnature of inequality and exploitation in the capitalist system.

Social justice and the Portuguese planning system 385

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31.2© 2007 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2007 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

The critique of rational comprehensive planning made by the first political economistswas that in depoliticizing the distribution of resources, this contentless approach1 toplanning was separating equity from efficiency, and therefore failing to understand thedistributional mechanisms of both public and private goods in the urban system and ‘thereal relations of power it was serving and in which it was deeply and inextricablyimplicated’ (Sandercock, 1998a: 91; Harvey, 1973). As a technical instrument of the stateopen to class alliances, planning was perceived as an embodiment of the capitalist systemof accumulation and a contextless reproductive mechanism2 with substantial distributiveeffects in urban space (McDougall, 1982; Levy, 2004). In terms of their owntranscendent goal for urban analysis, the political economists deemed that planningperpetuated and in many cases enhanced existing economic inequalities (Harvey, 1973;Fainstein, 1996).

However, this emphasis on the structural limitations to planning proved to bediscouraging to progressive planners since it lacked a strong practice-oriented approach.As a result, McDougall (1982: 265) tried to reassert the practical relevance of thisapproach to planning by looking at the possibility of developing a socialist practice ‘inand against the state’ through the opportunities opened by its contradictory nature.Consequently, the action agenda of the political economists is based on the developmentof an adaptable platform of resistance against ‘schemes that enhance capitalaccumulation to the detriment of ordinary citizens’ (Fainstein, 1996: 21) and thereforeincrease inequality. Thinking and acting politically for the promotion of structuralchange, the political economists concentrate on the economic substance of cities and takeaction in the ‘particular application of just principles which arise out of [conflictingclaims regarding] . . . the division of benefits and the allocation of burdens’ (Harvey,1973: 97; Levy, 2004).

The tendency of the political economists is then ‘to equate economic motives with therational and all other impetuses with the irrational’ (Fainstein, 1996: 23). As is stressedby the postmodernists, this leads to the inadequate assumption that economic inequalitysubsumes all other forms of subordination, such as those based on gender, ethnicity, ageor ability (Sandercock, 1998a). Subsequently, in her vision of the just city, Fainstein goesbeyond the traditional political economy approach ‘in analyzing distributive outcomes asthey affect non-class-based groupings and refusing to collapse non-economic forms ofdomination into class categories’ (Fainstein, 2003: 186). But she does that withoutneglecting the constraining power of the global capitalist political economy. In thatsense, rescuing the strong explanatory potential of the political economy tradition,Fainstein’s approach constitutes an innovative reformulation of that tradition throughwhich urban phenomena and the nature of the just city are investigated and explained intheir socio-historical context3 (Fainstein, 1996; 2005). Context is then, in Fainstein’sview, what should govern theory and practice towards the ideal of the just city, and ‘in thecase of urban planning, that context is the field of power in which the city lies’ (Fainstein,2005: 125).

Presenting a path towards the constructive understanding of that context in thecontemporary city, Fainstein rescues utopianism as ‘creating a force for change’ (2003:186) and proposes ‘an examination of planning’s outcomes and a comparison of thoseoutcomes to a view of the just city’ (2005: 125). Despite being a social construction that

1 That is, an approach which ‘engages in a form of generalisation which we might designate asindeterminate abstraction’ (Scott and Roweis, 1977, cited by McDougall, 1982: 260).

2 That is, a mechanism that reproduces capitalism’s underpinning social relations and ‘treats thephenomena of planning itself as entirely non-problematic: that is it treats planning as a datum andnot an explicandum’ (Scott and Roweis, 1977, cited by McDougall, 1982: 260).

3 ‘These inquiries . . . force an examination of how cities have developed in the past; the relationshipbetween economic base, social structure (class, gender, and ethnicity), ideas, and governance; whatrole conscious policy played in producing urban form and social structure; how the system of powerrelations shaped policy; and the ways in which structures of power are malleable’ (Fainstein, 2005:127).

386 Ricardo Cardoso and Isabel Breda-Vázquez


develops out of relations of knowledge and power (as pointed out by the postmoderncommunicative planners), the ideal of the just city ‘transcends particularity’ (Fainstein,2005: 126) by focusing on what Harvey (2000: 246) calls ‘the moment of universality’.For this moment of choosing, Fainstein advances a ‘model of spatial relations based onequity’ (2003: 174), which looks at the urban ‘in terms of who gets what, when and how’(2005: 126). In that sense, like Harvey’s ‘specification of a just distribution justly arrivedat’ (Harvey, 1973: 97), Fainstein’s ideal focuses ‘on substance rather than process’(Fainstein, 1996: 22) but acknowledges that ‘substance and process are co-constituted’(Healey in Fainstein, 2005: 126) and therefore ‘calls for a sensitivity towards process anddiscourse as well’ (Fainstein, 2005: 128). In fact, participation in decision-making byrelatively powerless groups is part of the ideal of the just city. However, as Fainstein putsit, ‘the appropriate criterion for evaluating a group’s claims should not be proceduralalone; evaluation must comprise an analysis of whether realization of the group’s goalsis possible and, if so, whether such realization leaves intact the principle of social justice’(Fainstein, 2003: 187–8). Democracy is then extended beyond procedural norms andpolitical rights to gain substantive content in an unambiguously normative vision whichimplies social rights and material equity of outcomes (Hay, 1995; Fainstein, 2003; 2005).

This means that Fainstein’s ‘concept of the just city embodies a revived recognition ofthe need to formulate social values explicitly’ (Fainstein, 2001: 885). The main concernis then with the what of the previous formulation and the methodology is to examineurban distributions against Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city by ‘[raising]questions of who owns the city [in terms] of a collective sense of each groups’ ability toaccess employment and culture, to live in a decent home and suitable living environment,to obtain a satisfying education, to maintain personal security, and to participate in urbangovernance’ (Fainstein, 2005: 126). This runs in parallel with Harvey’s (2000) use of theUnited Nations Declaration of Human Rights to formulate a set of principles for his owninsurgent practice and, most notably, with the activities of various social movements andprogressive planners around the world, of which the most recent outcome has beenthe World Charter on the Right to the City.4 Both endeavors embrace questions ofgovernance and procedural justice. However, like Fainstein’s view of the just city, theirinnovative edge rests on the explicit formulation of social values. This is very clear in twoof the most important principles of the charter: the social function of the city, whichensures equitable distributions of the full usufruct of its economy, culture, resources anddevelopment initiatives; and the social function of property, which prioritizes collectiveinterests over the individual right of property and entails what Harvey (2000: 250) termed‘the right to collective control of common property resources’. In fact, it is theunambiguous social character of these principles that provides the background for theformulation of tangible rights for urban citizens. Putting these rights together withthe conceptual apparatuses utilized by Fainstein (2001) and Harvey (2000), we havecompiled an interlocking and mutually dependent set of criteria, which take the form ofmaterial rights of citizens in order to evaluate planning outcomes in terms of socialjustice (see Table 1).

From postmodernism towards Cosmopolis

Nearly 20 years after Social Justice in the City, David Harvey wrote The Condition ofPostmodernity (1989). Unlike the former, the latter book does not constitute thefoundation of a new approach to geographical analysis. Instead, it investigates theemergence of ‘new dominant ways in which we experience space and time’ (Harvey,1989: vii) and the corresponding origins of a profound socio-cultural change. In that

4 The World Charter on the Right to the City is one of many initiatives for the promotion of arights-based approach to urban planning and management; others include the European Charter forSafeguarding Human Rights in the City, the Brazilian City Statute or the Montréal Charter on Rightsand Responsibilities. See UNESCO and UN-HABITAT (2006) for further information.



sense, in a comparative parallel with the previous characterization of the politicaleconomy approach, it is ‘Culture, rather than economy [that constitutes] the root ofpolitical identity’ (Fainstein, 1996: 27) in postmodernist planning endeavors. Celebratingmulticulturalism, the postmodernists embark on journeys ‘of coming to terms withdifference [and] of connection with the cultural Other’ (Sandercock, 1998a: 4).Thepostmodernist approaches deconstruct the underlying assumptions of the modernistproject, challenging its ingrained ‘representation of planning as the voice of reason inmodern society [and] the carrier of the Enlightenment mission of material progressthrough scientific rationality’ (Sandercock, 1998b: 2). Distrusting all kinds ofmetanarratives, the postmodernists indict rational comprehensive planning, accusingunitary scientific rationalism of being useless against society’s growing cleavages andthe particularities of place (Levy, 2004). Like the political economists, the postmodernistplanners aim at discerning power relations and their influence on planning practices, butunlike the traditional Marxists, they ‘identify the way in which space embodies powerwithout necessarily locating its source in particular groups of people’ (Fainstein, 1996:26). Rational comprehensive planning is then perceived as perpetuating various kinds ofinequalities (Sandercock, 1998a).

The view here is that ‘social justice in the city requires the realization of a politics ofdifference’ (Young, 1990: 240) and the normative vision for that politics is Young’s idealof city life as ‘openness to unassimilated otherness’ (ibid.: 227). For this ideal of the cityas a space of connection with the cultural other — where ‘life is a being together ofstrangers, diverse and overlapping neighbors’ (ibid.: 240) — to be realized, city politicsmust ‘[take] account of and [provide] voice for the different groups that dwell togetherin the city without forming a community’ (ibid.: 227). This means that ‘cities and regionsof the future must nurture difference and diversity through a democratic culturalpluralism’ (Sandercock, 1998a: 183) which ‘lays down institutional and ideologicalmeans for recognizing and affirming diverse social groups by giving political

Table 1 Outcome-oriented evaluation criteria

Material Rights of Citizens Key Characteristics

The right to live in a decent home This includes the right of all citizens to affordable, habitable,accessible and culturally adequate housing, as well as theright to access public services with domestic relevance.

The right to a suitable andsustainable living environment

This includes the right of all citizens to an adequate andhealthy environment, as well as the rights of futuregenerations.

The right to obtain a satisfyingeducation

This is the right of all citizens to obtain an education thatmeets their own needs in a multicultural framework of socialcohesion, both at school and by other means.

The right to work This includes not only the right of all citizens to accessemployment opportunities but also the right to adequateworking conditions as well as the rights of the direct laborersin the process of production.

The right to circulation This is the right of all citizens to mobility by means ofadequate and affordable public transportation systems, whichtake into account environmental and social needs.

The right to be healthy This is the right of all citizens to the highest attainablestandard of physical and mental health and to access publicservices for the prevention of illness and medical treatment.

The right to culture and leisure This is the right of all citizens to access culture and leisureactivities in all their expressions, manifestations andmodalities.



representation to these groups, and celebrating their distinctive characteristics andcultures’ (Young, 1990: 240). In that sense, despite recognizing the importance of thepolitical economy tradition in introducing ‘the language of distributive justice’ in theplanning debate, Sandercock (1998a: 183) points out that what is missing from thistradition ‘is a broader definition of injustice and inequality which includes but is notlimited to the material, the economic realm’.5

This is different from saying that the postmodernists ignore the structural reality inwhich planning works. Actually, in Towards Cosmopolis, Sandercock (1998a: 199)emphasizes that ‘the single undeniable cultural hegemony is that economic rationality isparamount, and every city, region and nation has to realize its social ideals as best it canwithin the constraints of a profit-maximizing world market’. What that broader definitionmeans is that, under the postmodernist approach, the conceptualization of ‘social justicemust consider not only distributive patterns, but also the processes and relationships thatproduce and reproduce those patterns’ (Young, 1990: 241).

Displacing the distributive paradigm that characterizes mainstream theories of justice,Young (1990: 39) formulates a postmodern theory of justice which includes ‘theinstitutional conditions necessary for the development and exercise of individualcapacities and collective communication and cooperation’. This radicalreconceptualization entails a ‘process-oriented understanding of society, which focuseson power [and] decision-making structures’ (Young, 1990: 37). In fact, for Sandercock,the overall goal of her postmodernist project ‘is not so much to create a document calleda plan as to generate a political process’ (Sandercock, 1998a: 7) which ‘[gives] meaningto the idea of heterogeneous public [through] a more participatory democracy groundedin the recognition of difference and therefore of formal group representation’ (ibid.: 198).Accordingly, the focus of her journey towards cosmopolis is on process rather thansubstance and material outcomes. Nevertheless, when describing cosmopolis as her own‘postmodern Utopia which can never be realized but only ever be in the making’ (ibid.:182), she asserts that a ‘politics of difference, in the end, must be able to take on some(redefined) notion of the good of/in that society’ (ibid.: 186). In fact, as Fainstein pointsout, Sandercock presents a strategy in which she provides a definition of the just city as‘one that is socially inclusive, where difference is not merely tolerated but treated withrecognition and respect’ (Fainstein, 2005: 127). However she also stresses that there is insuch an ideal a foundational requirement for a civic culture which ‘demands the fosteringof an everyday politics of dialogue and negotiation as the habit of political participation’(Sandercock, 1998a: 199).

This means that one of Sandercock’s main concerns is with the creation ofinstitutional conditions for the constitution of cosmopolis (Sandercock, 1998a). There isthen a strong requirement for the suppression of any disabling constraints ‘embeddedin . . . the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences offollowing those rules’ (Young, 1990: 41) and therefore for the elimination of what Young(1990) has called the five faces of institutionalized oppression. In fact, in her Foucauldianreading of oppression as ‘an enclosing structure of forces and barriers which tends to theimmobilization and reduction of a group or category of people’ (Frye, 1983: 11, cited inYoung, 1990: 41), Young offers a fundamental conceptualization of those disablingconstraints. Developing a set of categories and distinctions to cover all the ways in whichgroups are oppressed, she provides the conceptual bedrock for a postmodernist theory ofsocial justice and the creation of institutional conditions for the constitution ofSandercock’s cosmopolis. Based on Young’s (1990) five faces of oppression, as well asHarvey’s (2002) interpretation of those, we have built a unified set of objective criteria,which take the form of disabling institutional constraints in order to evaluate planningprocesses in terms of social justice (see Table 2).

5 It is said that a conception of social justice as distribution assumes and therefore accepts themodernist planning project without challenging it fundamentally.



Evaluative frameworkBringing together the splitting parts of the fundamental argumentative tension betweenpolitical economists and postmodernists, our theoretical framework contemplates theirdissimilar core assertions as well as their individual critiques of rational comprehensiveplanning (RCP) and subsequently originates two parallel, but interconnected sets ofcriteria. These constitute the methodological foundation to guide the intended analysis ofthe Portuguese planning system (PPS). Given the wide scope of such an analysis, thosesets of criteria are given practical relevance through a corresponding twofold scrutinizinginquiry that constitutes the operational means of our study.

In what concerns the political economic side of our framework, the fundamentalquestion is to understand the extent to which the planning system’s vision for theterritory enables socially just policy-making. Following the underlying theoreticalconstruction, our objective here is to discern the extent to which the right to the city iscontemplated in the system’s envisioning formulations. Trying to evaluate the overallquality of the system, we have operationalized this objective by seeking to investigate thenature of its material expectations in terms of the progressive provisions of theirgrounding principles.

On the postmodernist side, the primary concern is to examine the extent to which theplanning system’s intended processes are socially just. Given the above set of process-oriented criteria, our objective in this case is to identify potentially oppressive constraintsin the decision-making mechanisms through which the various instruments of the system

Table 2 Process-oriented evaluation criteria

Disabling Institutional Constraints Key Characteristics

Exploitation This refers to structural relations and social processesthat bring about a transfer of energies to produce unequaldistributional patterns, and to the way in which institutionsand practices of policy and decision-making enable a fewto accumulate, while constraining many more both in theworkplace and at home.

Marginalization This involves the deprivation of cultural, practical andinstitutionalized conditions for exercising capacities in acontext of recognition and interaction, raising structuralissues that concern the appropriateness of a connectionbetween participation in social life and access to themeans of consumption.

Powerlessness This affects communities’ ability to express political powerthrough direct participation in public policy decisions, andpeople’s capacity to engage in particular politics ofself-expression, developing and exercising skills innon-hierarchical schemes of policy implementation.

Cultural imperialism This happens when the dominant means of interpretationand communication in a society render the particularperspective of a person’s own group invisible, at the sametime as they fail to recognize the perspective embodied indifferent cultural expressions in a non-stereotyped,inclusive manner.

Violence This relates to instances where social and institutionalpractices encourage and tolerate violent acts, enablingthem to become systematic in character and allowing theirperpetual existence as a social practice in thereproduction of relations of dominance and aversionthrough cultural images, stereotypes and the gestures ofeveryday life.



are produced. Looking at the system as a whole, we have operationalized this objectiveby intending to analyze the procedural mechanisms of the system and critically scrutinizetheir interactive roles in terms of ownership and control.

This twofold examining proposition pulls together an evaluative framework toinvestigate and critically describe the Portuguese planning system (see Table 3). The waythis framework is constructed indicates the importance of looking at the underlyingassumptions of the planning system as well as its core institutional arrangements. This isto be done through a theoretically grounded reading of the planning system in terms ofboth expected outcomes and intended processes.

Critical description of the Portuguese planning systemFollowing the proposed evaluative framework, we have attempted to critically describethe underlying assumptions and institutional arrangements of the Portuguese planningsystem by examining the relevant legal documents as well as related literature. The mainobjective was to scrutinize the programmatic vision (or expected outcomes) andprocedural establishments (or intended processes) of the contemporary planning system.To facilitate a better understanding of its assumptions, we began by depicting thesystem’s structuring forces and foundational endeavors.

Table 3 Evaluative framework

From Political Economyto the Just City

From Postmodernismtowards Cosmopolis

Focusing on Economic substance, through atranscendent goal of economicequality.

Culture, coming to terms withdifference and connecting withthe cultural Other.

Critique of RCP (RationalComprehensive Planning)

Depoliticization of planning:contentless approach with nounderstanding of powerrelations.

Planning’s scientific rationality:useless for discerning theomnipresent workings of power.

Perpetuates and enhanceseconomic inequality.

Perpetuates and enhancesvarious inequalities.

Argument Acting through the applicationof just principles in division ofbenefits and allocation ofburdens.

Undertaking a politics ofdifference through an ideal ofopenness to unassimilatedOtherness.

Focusing on socio-historicalsubstantive context.

Focusing on institutional andideological conditions.

Examining planning’s outcomes. Understanding society’sprocesses.

Social justice in the city impliessocial rights and material equity.

Social justice in the city impliesparticipation and socialinclusiveness.

Focusing on the need for anexplicit formulation of socialvalues.

Focusing on the need for a civicculture of dialogue andnegotiation.

Criteria of social justice Evaluating outcomes throughthe material rights of citizens:the right to the city (Table 1).

Evaluating processes throughtheir disabling constraints: thefive faces of oppression(Table 2).

Reading the PPS through . . . . . . a critical description of thesystem’s vision in terms of theprogressiveness of its principles.

. . . a critical description of thesystem’s processes in terms ofownership and control.



Structuring forces

Under the long-lasting dictatorship installed in 1933, the political regime and publicadministration in Portugal were extremely centralized. Circumscribed by thetechnocratic legitimacy of the central state, municipalities did not have political orfinancial autonomy (Monteiro, 2006); their technical self-sufficiency was also stronglyrestricted as most plans were prepared in Lisbon (Costa Lobo, 2001). When, in the1940s, planning began to be understood as a relevant branch of public policy, therationale was to control and direct the process of urbanization that was followingthe strong migratory movements in the country (Barreto, 2000; Rosa Pires, 2005). Thiswas also the leading principle under the profound modifications in planning’s legalframework that occurred between 1970 and 1973 (Carvalho, 2003). The main concernwas then with the ‘preparation of plans for urban areas (rather than for the wholemunicipality) and the focus of planning was on land use change and urban form(including zoning)’ (Rosa Pires, 2005: 239). However, a hefty and inefficient systemoperated by a restricted and an intellectually, socially and physically detached universeof planners, meant that very few plans were approved until the mid-1970s (Pena, 2005;Rosa Pires, 2005). Planning was a deterministic instrument used by central governmentto rationalize physical interventions in urban areas through the implementation ofdetailed blueprints for the future form of cities (Rosa Pires, 2001; 2005).

As is argued by many, this conceptual framework remains omnipresent in Portuguesecontemporary planning. In fact, despite the radical transformations that the democraticrevolution of 1974 and succeeding EU membership brought about in the context ofplanning, the pace of change of its dominant approaches has been tremendously slow(Costa Lobo, 2001; Rosa Pires, 2001). Reflecting the unavoidable ‘continuities’identified by Barreto (2000: 37) in the processes of social, economic and politicaltransformation, ‘the socially pervasive conceptual framework inherited from the longyears of [dictatorship] is still rather influential on professional, social (and political)perceptions of the nature and scope of spatial planning’ (Rosa Pires, 2005: 239). Thismeans that, despite significant changes, the most ‘distinctive and structuralcharacteristics’ (ibid.: 238) of the planning system remain active. The rationalcomprehensive approach that dominated before 1974 is still acting as the mainstructuring force in the contemporary form of the planning system.

Foundational endeavors

With decentralization and the reinforcement of local power on the agenda, the newdemocratic regime provided municipalities with political and financial autonomy,legitimizing democratic decision making at the local level (Monteiro, 2006). After aninitial preoccupation with the provision of basic services, the contemporary character ofthe planning system started to take shape at the beginning of the 1980s, with theintroduction of a set of legislative instruments aimed at regulating state intervention inspatial planning, particularly the Municipal Director Plan (PDM6), a land use regulatoryplan based on functional zoning (Carvalho, 2003; Monteiro, 2006). Prepared andapproved by local authorities (but still ratified by the central government), these plansbrought three main conceptual innovations (Rosa Pires, 2005): first, they covered thewhole municipality rather than only the urban areas; second, an explicit socio-economicstrategy underpinning land use and zoning proposals was required; and third, despite itsweakness, a system of public participation in plan preparation and approval wasintroduced. In what concerns the architecture of the system as a whole, a divisionbetween physical local plans, under the responsibility of local authorities, and regionaland special plans, under the responsibility of the central government, started to get

6 The PDM [Plano Director Municipal] was introduced by Law no. 79/77, published 25 October 1977and regulated by the Law-Decree no. 208/82, published 26 May 1982.



defined (Portas et al., 1998; Costa Lobo, 2001). However, procedures were cumbersomeand most local authorities were technically ill-equipped to prepare plans. As a result,only four out of 305 municipalities had their PDMs approved and ratified by the end ofthe decade (Rosa Pires, 2001).

This led, at the beginning of the 1990s,7 to the simplification of technical requirementsand approval procedures as well as the introduction of penalties for municipalities thatfailed to prepare their plans (Rosa Pires, 2001; Carvalho, 2003). The European Union’sCommunity Support Frameworks were the main force behind the redrawing of thesystem, and the focus on physical infrastructures of the first two of these frameworksmeant that the emphasis on land use regulation and transformation throughout zoningmechanisms was maintained (Pena, 2005; Rosa Pires, 2005). Moreover, consolidatingthe hierarchical relationship (in terms of scale and detail) between the different types ofphysical local plans existing at the time (since then called PMOTs — Municipal Plans forSpatial Planning), the renewed legislation was also clearer about the architecture of thesystem at the municipal scale (Costa Lobo, 2001; Carvalho, 2003). Nevertheless, it wasnot until the end of the decade that a distinction in terms of principles and objectives wasmade between the different categories of plans.

The contemporary planning system

The first framework law for spatial planning8 and consequent regulation decree9 came in1998 and 1999 respectively to reinforce the foundations of the planning system anddelineate its contemporary form. Defining and integrating the public administration’sinterventions in the territory, this renewed version of the system ‘tried to consolidate thestrategic perspective as well as to reinforce public participation’ (Rosa Pires, 2005: 240),establishing a conceptual backbone for policy-making and defining a concordantregulatory system of spatial management (Carvalho, 2003; Costa Lobo, 2001). It is thuspossible to look at the contemporary form of the Portuguese planning system in terms ofits policy vision — analyzing purposes and objectives in the framework law — and interms of the proposed processes to manage it — scrutinizing the interactive roles of thedifferent spatial planning instruments. This will allow us to evaluate the overall qualityof the system by applying the framework defined before through its twofold examiningproposition. But ahead of that, it is essential to understand the architecture of thatsystem.10

The contemporary form of the Portuguese system (see Table 4) articulates three scalesof intervention in spatial planning — national, regional and municipal — through fourdifferent sets of management instruments with specific purposes: developmentinstruments, which provide the main strategic orientations for the different territorialplanning endeavors; specific policy instruments, which materialize socio-economicpolicies with spatial relevance; special instruments, which constitute an additional meansfor the central government to intervene in the territory; and finally, planning instruments,which regulate land use defining transformational models for the territory.

The depiction of the legislation in Table 4 illustrates a system that is both verticallyand horizontally articulated. Embodying ‘the need to develop a strategic and integrateddimension to spatial planning’ (Rosa Pires, 2005: 241), the vertical multiscale approachis complemented by a horizontal conceptual divide between, on the one hand, planninginstruments based on the notions of orientation and regulation, through which

7 Through the Law-Decree no. 69/90, published 2 March 1990.8 Lei de Bases do Ordenamento do Território e de Urbanismo (LBOTU), Law no. 48/98, published 11

August 1998.9 Regime Jurídico dos Instrumentos de Gestão Territorial (RJIGT), Law-Decree no. 380/99, published

on 22 September 1999, modified by the Law-Decree no. 310/2003, published on 10 December 2003.10 As set out in Chapter II of LBOTU and Chapter I, Section II and Chapter II of RJIGT.



Table 4 Architecture and instruments of the Portuguese planning system

Scale ofintervention

Types of Instruments

Development Specific Policy Special Planning

National PNPOT PS PEOT

Regional PROT

Municipal PIOT PMOTs: PDM, PU, PP

Instruments Description

PNPOT ProgramaNacional da Politica deOrdenamento doTerritório

The National Program for Territorial Planning Policy definesprinciples and objective paths to orientate spatial development;based on a comprehensive model of territorial organization, thisprogram defines a unitary framework for development and planningendeavors with the objective of rationalizing (and balancing) spatialdistributions at the national scale.

PS Plano Sectorial The Sector-based Plans materialize specific policies with relevancefor spatial planning in the different domains of intervention of thestate (from transport and communications, to housing, educationand health). Defining principles and paths, each sector-based planorientates the implementation of a certain policy throughout thenational territory in order to rationalize (and balance) specificspatial distributions.

PEOT Plano Especial deOrdenamento doTerritório

The Special Plans for Spatial Planning regulate land use with theobjective of safeguarding the national interest with regard toenvironmental issues with direct implications for ecologicaldistributions in the territory (plans for protected areas or coastalregions).

PROT Plano Regional deOrdenamento doTerritório

The Regional Plans for Spatial Planning define principles andobjectives for territorial development strategies in the differentregions. Integrating orientations made at the national level andconstituting a framework for the elaboration of plans at themunicipal level, these comprehensive plans specify and orientateregional spatial distributions.

PIOT Plano Intermunicipalde Ordenamento doTerritório

At the lower level of the system, the Inter-municipal Plans forSpatial Planning are socio-economic development instrumentsdesigned with the intention of coordinating regional and municipalscales in structurally interdependent territories. Like the otherdevelopment instruments, they define principles and objectives toorientate spatial distributions.

PMOT Plano Municipal deOrdenamento doTerritório

The Municipal Plans for Spatial Planning are regulatory instrumentsthat generate land use regimes through territorial classification andfunctional categorization. Divided into subtypes of plans, theseregimes define transformational models for the municipalities withdifferent levels of detail. There are three subtypes of municipalplans: PDM, PU and PP.

PDM Plano DirectorMunicipal

The Municipal Director Plans operate with the spatial structures ofthe municipalities as a whole, translating development strategieswhich integrate options made at national and regional levels ofplanning; their preparation is compulsory.

PU Plano de Urbanização More detailed than the foregoing, the Urbanization Plans defineoperations within urban areas as specific instruments of functionalcategorization.

PP Plano de Pormenor The most detailed of the planning instruments, the Layout Plans godown to the level of urban design to conceptualize interventions inany area of the municipal territory.



development and specific policy instruments exist to orientate and structure territorialpolicies, and, on the other, special and planning instruments that regulate and conducttheir implementation (Monteiro, 2006).

In order to coordinate this bidirectional articulation in the system, law and regulatorydecree put forward a widely acknowledged hierarchical scheme of relations between thedifferent planning instruments. This meant that wider-scale instruments provide strategicframeworks for lower-scale ones, and regulatory instruments have to follow thedirections of orientation ones. The various instruments are thus rendered compatible bymeans of a hierarchical relationship which subsumes a rational comprehensiveapprehension of reality. Reflecting its own genetic code, the Portuguese system is verymuch influenced by a view of planning as a scientific enterprise capable of coordinatingthe territory as a whole.

Progressiveness in the vision of the system11

Built on a threefold set of material expectations (the aims, principles and objectives ofthe planning system), the existing legislation generates an envisioning policy frameworkfor spatial planning in Portugal. As an expression of expected outcomes, this representsthe spatial policy vision of a system that aspires to ensure an adequate organization andutilization of the national territory, seeking its valorization in the European context. Tofulfill that aspiration, the primary purpose is to propel integrated, harmonious andsustainable economic, social and cultural development in the country, its regions andurban agglomerates.

In terms of policy aims, the planning system discloses a compound vision for theterritory encompassing multiple dimensions. Most notably, the system aims atstrengthening national cohesion through a fair distribution of infrastructures, publicservices and urban functions to ensure favorable conditions for the development ofdiverse economic, social and cultural activities. As in many other social democraticsystems of present times (see Fainstein, 2001), this subsumes a tacit synergeticrelationship between economic competitiveness and social cohesion. Incorporating sucha relationship, the ambition of the PNPOT,12 which is one of the key instruments toimplement a national strategy founded on what it calls ‘the three pillars of sustainabledevelopment (Environmental Protection and Valorization, Social Cohesion andEconomic Development)’ (MAOTDR, 2006a: 116), is to propel development and spatialplanning polices towards ‘a sustainable and well planned territory; a competitive,integrated and open economy; an equitable territory in terms of development and well-being; [and] a creative society, with a sense of citizenship’ (ibid.: 117). Like Fainstein(2001), we do not openly question the validity of this assumed relationship, but webelieve in the crucial importance of explicitly formulating social values in order for it towork, something that the Portuguese planning system falls short of.

Abiding by a broad range of principles for policy-making, spatial planning endeavorsunder this planning system have to follow contextually raised objectives, promoting theimprovement of living conditions through sustainable and well-balanced policyresponses to people’s diverse and specific needs. What in our view is lacking here is anexplicit formulation of citizens’ rights instead of needs that can ‘help generate thepolitical will and create a culture of resource allocation that places the interests of thepoor on an equal footing with those better off’ (Sané and Tibaijuka in UNESCO andUN-HABITAT, 2006: 9). In fact, reflecting the remaining significance of the rationalcomprehensive approach in shaping mainstream planning in Portugal, there is a blatantdepoliticization of the system’s objectives and a subsequent lack of content as regards

11 As set out in Chapter I of LBOTU.12 After a period of public discussion that finished in October 2006, the technical proposal for the

PNPOT (National Program for Territorial Planning Policy) is now being reformulated for officialapproval in 2007.



social values. This is clear in the strategic objectives of the PNPOT’s action program(MAOTDR, 2006b), which delineate a multidimensional approach to achieving theprogram’s ambition for the territory. Matching the six domains of spatial planningproblems identified after studying the ‘organization, tendencies and performance of theterritory’ (MAOTDR, 2006a: 27), the strategic objectives of the PNPOT point toward asustainable reinforcement of Portugal’s territorial competitiveness through polycentricinfrastructural development and efficient territorial management to promote spatialintegration, universal access to services and social cohesion (MAOTDR, 2006b). Thisneeds-based discourse that pervades the document is characteristic of a planning systemworking on a hierarchical scheme of relations between its instruments, and subsumes adenial of political conflict in the making of the territory.

This depoliticization of planning’s aims, principles and objectives prevents the crucialconceptualization of the territory as the spatial embodiment of an enabling state thatensures the social function of the city by formulating citizen’ rights. This means thatunder the Portuguese planning system, constituents of planning practices are understoodas beneficiaries of plans and programs instead of recognized right-holders in the makingof the territory. As a result, on the whole, the system’s endeavors fall short of inductingthe crucial structural changes necessary to bring about progressively just outcomes.

Ownership in the processes of the system13

In what concerns its own intended processes, the Portuguese planning system makes useof four different types of decision-making mechanisms in the production of itsinstruments: elaboration, supervision, participation and approval. For each differentinstrument of the system, these procedural mechanisms are combined in a specificpattern that determines the roles and responsibilities of public, private and civil societyactors in its production. In general terms, these patterns of roles and responsibilitiesdemonstrate a clear intention to integrate both the private sector and civil society inspatial planning decisions.

However, a closer look at the procedural mechanisms of the system shows that,despite this intention, the ownership of its processes stays essentially within the stateapparatus. In terms of elaboration, instruments at the national level are under theresponsibility of the government and the various organisms of the central administration;regional plans are prepared by the corresponding development and coordinationcommissions, which constitute the indirect administration designated by the centralgovernment; and inter-municipal and municipal plans are prepared by the localauthorities. In the same way, in terms of approval, all plans and programs (apart from theregional plans that are approved by the central government) are made official within theircorresponding level of administration. Nevertheless, the national government has toratify all inter-municipal and municipal director plans as well as urbanization and layoutplans when wider scale regulatory ones are ineffective. This critical depiction of intendedprocesses in the planning system corroborates Monteiro’s (2006) portrayal of theplanning system, and shows that both elaboration and approval are state-led mechanismsworking within a historically centralized political and administrative power structure(Cabral and Rato, 2003). In fact, these governance schemes, like many others in Portugal,are characterized ‘by strong continuities with regard to the dominant role of the centralstate’ (Silva and Syrett, 2006: 98).

This also has a strong influence upon the mechanisms of supervision andparticipation, rendering them manifestly weak as regards the incorporation of the publicin decision-making. With respect to supervision and harmonization of interests, thepreparation of the planning instruments is overseen by a prearranged body that takes anactive role in the period of conciliation succeeding the first elaboration of eachinstrument. The structure and responsibility of these bodies varies in relation to the

13 As set out in Chapter IV of LBOTU and Chapter II of RJIGT.



instrument’s scale and the nature of the different interests involved. On the whole, theyare to be constituted by representatives of public entities at the different levels of theadministration as well as representatives of so-called relevant special-interest groups(economic, social, cultural and environmental). Most importantly, showing disregard tothe shortcomings of representative democracy, they are almost always determined by thecentral government and set within the framework of a political culture ‘characterized bybureaucracy, elitism, a strong political party culture and the populist tendencies ofmunicipalities’ (Monteiro, 2006; Silva and Syrett, 2006: 117). Furthermore, in terms ofparticipation of the general public, the entities in charge of the different instruments arerequired to publicize all elements relevant to the elaboration of those instruments andcollect any observations and suggestions made by the public. While for the orientationinstruments this is restricted to the period of public discussion that comes after theconciliation procedures, in the case of the regulatory instruments it is mandatory duringthe entire process of elaboration. Additionally, in this case, it is also possible tocounterclaim and ask for clarifications during the period of public discussion. At the endof the public discussion, the entities in charge consider the proposals made by the publicand produce the final version of the instrument. This clearly shows that participation is,in essence, conceived as a formal process of public consultation controlled by the stateauthorities, rather than a mechanism of dialogue and negotiation through which citizensactually control the decision-making (Amaral and Monteiro, 2004).

Pulling together this reading of the decision-making mechanisms with the earlierrepresentation of the planning system as being coordinated by a hierarchical scheme ofrelations, it is clear that the institutional conditions created by the Portuguese planningsystem inhibit and prevent most people from actively participating in making decisionsthat affect the conditions of their lives and actions. In fact, under this system, the meansof interpretation and communication are likely to become the dominant ones, directparticipation in planning decisions is virtually nonexistent and policy-making is onthe whole hierarchical, imposing rules on both bureaucrats and citizens. This means that,on the whole, the processes of the Portuguese planning system contribute toinstitutionalized oppression.

ConclusionThe increasing spatial inequalities within the Portuguese territorial system and theremaining significance of scientific rationalism in shaping mainstream planning inPortugal prompted us to bring moral values into play in assessing the making of itsterritory. Our proposition is that social justice should constitute the guiding foundationfor planning and our initial efforts consisted in evaluating the core institutionalarrangements of the Portuguese planning system. This evaluation followed thefundamental argumentative tension created between the political economist view of thejust city and the postmodernist path towards cosmopolis. In our critical description ofthe Portuguese planning system, we have demonstrated the contemporary relevance ofboth critiques to rational comprehensiveness by examining the system’s structuringforces and foundational endeavors, and followed the split theoretical arguments toevaluate the same system in terms of both policy vision and proposed processes.

In what concerns the system’s policy vision, we have identified a lack of an explicitformulation of social values and an associated neglectful treatment of social rights andmaterial equity in planning’s expected outcomes. This means that, under the proposedtheoretical framework, the most basic assumptions of the Portuguese planning systemhinder socially just policy-making. In our view, this involves an unambiguous definitionof citizen’s economic, social and cultural rights, which enhances social control overspatial development.

In terms of the system’s proposed processes, we have criticized them as contributingto institutionalized oppression by means of centralized decision-making mechanisms



and an inadequate conception of citizen participation. Under the proposed theoreticalframework, this means that the intended processes of the Portuguese planning systemare, in essence, socially unjust. In our view, procedural justice implies a civic culture ofdialogue and negotiation based on a socially inclusive and empowering conception ofparticipation.

These two judgments underpin our general contention that, in what concerns its coreinstitutional arrangements, the Portuguese planning system is not capable of meeting thefundamental principle of social justice. They also demonstrate the significance of raisingissues of justice in relation to the Portuguese system and the criteria’s pertinence to thiscontext. Above all, they introduce an innovative way to interpret and constructivelyrethink the planning system in a country characterized by growing spatial inequalities.Our purpose in this article is twofold: to introduce new ways of making more socially justcities and regions through progressive legislation that can have a positive impact on theconventional models of spatial development in Portugal; and, most importantly, totransform ways of understanding and practicing planning in the country and elsewhereby proposing a progressive theoretical construction that runs along a fundamentalargumentative divide to inform spatial planning as a field of knowledge.

Ricardo Cardoso ([email protected]) and Isabel Breda-Vázquez ([email protected]),Secção de Planeamento do Território e Ambiente, Departamento de Engenharia Civil,Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, s/n, 4200-465Porto, Portugal.

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RésuméLes premiers recours à la justice sociale comme guide en matière de théorie et pratiquede l’aménagement urbain s’appuyaient sur la tentative de David Harvey d’intégrer desaspects de justice redistributive dans les méthodes d’analyse géographiques. Plus tard,d’autres conceptions se serviront de la perspective d’Iris Marion Young sur la justicesociale comme condition institutionnelle permettant la participation tout en surmontantoppression et domination grâce au développement personnel et à l’autodétermination.Ces deux voies conceptuelles créent une tension argumentaire constructive qui devraitsous-tendre l’aménagement spatial contemporain dans les sociétés démocratiques.Autrement dit, pour contribuer à des sociétés urbaines plus justes socialement,l’aménagement doit s’attacher, non seulement aux schémas de distribution, mais aussiaux structures sociales relationnelles et cadres institutionnels dans lesquels ses schémasopèrent. L’aménagement urbain portugais, conventionnel, général et fonctionnaliste, sesitue immanquablement dans un projet d’urbanisation moderniste. Selon nous, la naturenormative de la tension argumentaire établie entrave la capacité théorique des pratiquesmodernistes à aboutir à des territoires justes au plan social. L’article étudie la validitéde cet argument en analysant le système d’aménagement urbain portugais en fonction dedeux gammes de critères de justice sociale.



social justice as a guide to planning theory and practice: analyzing the portuguese planning system

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