The portuguese urban network or the Lilliputian urban network

• Autor(a) principal: Alves, Manuel Brandão
• Data de Publicação: 1994
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/22652
• topic: Urban Economy; Urban Network; Cities; Europe; Portugal

The reinforcement of the integration of the portuguese economy and society, in general, in the movement of transformation that characterize the european countries, in particular those of EC, in last decades, gave evidence to the structural fragilities of Portugal, in multiple domains. The incapacity of its urban network to face the defies of an increasingly dynamic and competitive world is one of the most evident aspects of these fragilities. These incapacity must be analyzed, both in terms of internal network, and in terms of integration in the network of the European cities and metropolis. Lisbon is the most important portuguese urban metropolitan area, with about 2.4 millions inhabitants (1991). That seems to be a reasonable dimension for a metropolitan area. But when we look at its stock of equipments and functions supplied we find that its importance is really lower and it is placed at the second or third rang of the european urban network, at the same level as Bilbao or Seville, in Spain. Unfortunately, the metropolitan area of Lisbon with a dimension of about 2.5 million inhabitants is at the same time too large and too little. It is too large, because it doesn't dispose of some of the public and private goods and services that characterize a metropolis with this demographic dimension. It is too "little, because it has not weight, dimension and organization enough to could have a partnership role in the network of european metropolis and cities, polarizing a sustained dynamic of specialization for Portugal. All other urban areas in Portugal can be considered has disqualified to exercise the proper competences of average dimension dynamic centers. Tendencies of evolution in last decades seems to indicate that the inland cities has strengthened its relative disqualification. Population of all these cities stabilized or decreased during last decade. One of the exceptions to this rule is precisely Évora, the city that receives this workshop, that increased its population of 34 851 to 38 938 ( +4 087). Perhaps that the factor quality of life can explain this movement. Naturally, that the dimension of an urban center and, in particular, its demographic one, is not, necessarily, a good indicator of its capability to dynamize its influential area. However as we don't dispose of any other indicator sufficiently updated and with the same degree of homogeneity, it will be taken this indicator to some of the exemplifications that we will do in next paragraphs.