UrbanoScenes sets out to explore, through a post-colonial epistemological lens, the construction, reproduction and contestation of imaginaries of urbanisation—focusing on Portugal, Angola and their transnational relations. It does so by focusing on how the society/nature dichotomy—and its derivatives, eg colony/metropolis, urban/rural, human/technology, modern/pre-modern, development/underdevelopment, North/South—informs dominant imaginaries and (re)produce socio-spatial relations of power. The working hypothesis being that the forms of (structural, cultural, state) violence/injustice that are inherent to global urbanisation are legitimised, reproduced and justified by the normative framing provided by such imaginaries, UrbanoScenes investigates alternative imaginaries co-existing with dominant ones. It does so from genealogical, comparative and future-oriented perspectives, building at the intersection of three fields of research so far largely disconnected from each other: - critiques of the ever-increasing influence of urban imaginaries (eg green, healthy, smart, creative, safe) in urban policy/discourse; - debates in post-colonial and critical urban studies on the global nature of the process of urbanisation; - world-ecology critiques of the persistence of the society/nature dichotomy in discourses around the Anthropocene. UrbanoScenes has three general goals: i) theoretical, to (re-)theorise urbanisation by unpacking the socio-political centrality played by imaginaries of urbanisation through a postcolonial perspective; ii) normative, to offer future-oriented insights to rethink urbanisation paradigms in the Anthropocene; and iii) policy-relevant, to produce knowledge useful to reframe urban policy. These goals are pursued through three specific objectives: a) to set out a genealogy of post-colonial imaginaries of urbanisation, as they are evident in urban theory, policy, fiction and architecture, with a multi-scalar focus, from global ideas to local actualisat...

The concept of “urban health” and the role of urban design in the quality promotion of the cities’ living spaces has been present in the international debate for some decades, but only since the publication of the “New Urban Agenda” (WHO 2016), health has been defined as “one of the most effective markers of any city’s sustainable development”. These aspects are beginning to be highly debated ona scientific level, but have not yet been introduced into university education. Moreover, the pandemic emergency we are experiencing imposes even more compelling reflection on the relationship between health and the city, and on the role of university research and education to understand what the city of the future will be like. Within this framework, Cli-CC.HE wants to promote an educational methodology and tools to deal with the effects of climate change on urban health and equity in teaching urban regeneration in European cities. Thanks to this project, EU universities and public administrations can train future experts able to plan interventions to limit climate change effects on health and equity in urban contexts.

The research project called 'Grand Projects - Architectural and Urbanistic Operations after the 1998 Lisbon World Exposition' aims at identifying, characterizing, debating, and reflecting the urban policies and architectural works produced in Portugal after the 1998 Lisbon World Exposition (Expo98). The study is grounded on the conviction that the effects of this 'urban laboratory' cannot dispense a predominantly analytical and interpretative work, capable of mapping and qualifying the urban, projectual, and technological culture implemented in Portugal in the two decades that followed the Expo98 ventures. In 2008, a decade past over the Lisbon Exposition, the Lisbon Municipality presented its 'General Plan for Waterfront Interventions' (Plano Geral de Intervenções da Frente Ribeirinha - PGIFR), aiming at establishing new urban continuities, by extending the model of the exposition from the West part of the city to the East (between the Trancão River and the Pedrouços dock), through the adaptation of some harbor infrastructure under the state administration. The dynamics generated by PGIFR framed the development of projects of both great scale and major strategic importance, e.g., the Champalimaud Foundation in Pedrouços district, designed by Charles Correa (1930-2015); the National Coach Museum in Belém area, designed by Paulo Mendes da Rocha (b. 1928); the EDP Headquarters at Boavista embankment, by Manuel (b. 1963) and Francisco (b.1964) Aires Mateus; the Ribeira das Naus public space, by João Ferreira Nunes (b.1960) and João Gomes da Silva (b.1962); or the future Cruise Terminal in Santa Apolónia, by Carrilho da Graça (b.1952), currently under construction. The research project 'Grand Projects - Architectural and Urbanistic Operations after the 1998 Lisbon World Exposition' seeks to deepen the relations produced by urban interventions with specific contexts in which they operate on. The distinctive feature of this project consists in the launching of a critical ...