From Livable Communities to Livable Metropolis: Challenges for Urban Mobility in Lisbon Metropolitan Area (Portugal)

Urban mobility plays an important role in addressing urban livability. The complexification and dispersion of travel due to the improvement of transport and the multiplication of our daily living places underline the relevance of multilevel territorial planning, recognizing that the knowledge of local differences is essential for more effective urban policies. This paper aims (1) to comprehend conceptually how urban mobility contributes to the urban livability from the local to metropolitan level and (2) to assess the previous relation toward a livable metropolis based on the readily available statistics for the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Hence, a triangulation between conceptual, political/operative, and quantitative/monitoring approaches is required. The methodology follows four steps: (1) literature review focusing on the quantification of urban mobility within the urban livability approach; (2) data collection from the Portuguese statistics system; (3) data analysis and results, using principal component analysis (PCA) followed by cluster analysis (CA); (4) discussion and conclusions. In Portugal, although it is implicit, consistency is evident between the premises of recent urban mobility policies and respective planning instruments, such as the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP), and the premises of urban livability as an urban movement. Focusing on the national statistics system, the available indicators that meet our quality criteria are scarce and represent a reduced number of domains. Even so, they allow identifying intra-metropolitan differences in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA) that could support multilevel planning instruments. The results identified five principal components related to commuting at the local and intermunicipal level, including car use as well as social and environmental externalities, and they reorganized the 18 LMA municipalities into eight groups, clearly isolating Lisbon, the capital, from the others. The identification of sensitive territories and respective problems based on urban livability principles is fundamental for an effective urban planning from livable communities to livable metropolis.

Theoretical Approaches to the Issue of Strategic Planning of Territories Development

The article deals with theoretical aspects to the issue of strategic planning of territories development. It is noted that the planning strategy includes goals, objectives, principles, elements and implementation mechanisms. The models of strategic planning are characterized. It is concluded that for the effective achievement of the result, a multilevel planning system is required that includes three levels: strategic, tactical and operational, accompanied by monitoring. It is indicated that the task of public administration is to create favorable conditions for regional development in the context of national interests.

How Can Sweden Deal with Forest Management and Municipal Planning in the System of Ongoing Land-Use and Multilevel Planning?

This article studies the relation between territorial and functional planning by investigating the Swedish local comprehensive planning system and the forest management. The former is locally based and the latter is functionally based or sector-orientated. By interviewing planners from the County Administrative Boards responsible for monitoring the national interests in the Swedish municipalities and forest managers from the Regional Forest Agency Administration, we found out that forest- and municipality related issues that coincide or interact with each other is normally considered in the collaborative planning process based on consultations and cooperation between the involved stakeholders. Weaknesses in the collaborative planning system consists of lack of coordination between the involved legal frameworks as well as lack of local planning resources and in some cases competences.