Governing Lisbon: evolving forms of city governance

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Carlos Nunes
• Data de Publicação: 2006
• Outros Autores: Syrett, Stephen
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/37077
• topic: City Governance; Lisbon; Portugal

For Lisbon, a dominant national capital and increasingly internationalized city, the last30 years have witnessed a period of dramatic growth, modernization and dynamism. Asthe socioeconomic landscape has changed, so too has the political and institutional one,with a significant evolution in the nature of systems of governance to manage, respondto and lead the city through this period of intense transition. Whilst increased globaland particularly European integration has been an important driver to change, criticallyit has been the interplay of these global forces with the role and constitution of thenational state and political developments at the level of the city, region and municipalitythat has shaped the evolutionary path of governance change. This article analyses recentgovernance change within Lisbon to argue that governance transition within Lisbon ischaracterized by significant change with regard to the relationships between public andprivate sectors, but also by strong continuities with regard to the dominant role of thecentral state in the absence of political devolution. The result is a governance systemmarked by structural constraints that limit the city’s capacity to deal with currentstrategic challenges in an integrated, coordinated and inclusionary manner.