Infrastrutures and politics in Portugal in the first half of the 20th century: innovation in lighting and water supply

• Autor(a) principal: Bernardo, Maria Ana
• Data de Publicação: 2004
• Outros Autores: Matos, Ana Cardoso de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10174/8989
• topic: História Contemporânea; História de Portugal; Infraestruturas; Água e Eletricidade; Legislação; Tecnologia

The building of water supply and lighting infrastructures - a fundamental factor in the urban modernisation process - was a common subject in Portuguese political rhetoric in the first half of the 20th century. Given that during that time Portugal went form a liberal regime (the First Republic) to authoritarian rule (the New State), the aims of this paper are to: - review the arguments, which were used by both regimes to appropriate the discourse on infrastructures;~ - identify the technical and technological options and the business models employed to build and manage the networks; - establish the rate at which they were implemented. The paper also attempts to fit the Portuguese case into the models and innovation processes followed in other countries.