The Carnation Revolution (1974-75) entailed the collapse of the old Portuguese colonial empire. The liberation of the former colonies prompted the exit from Angola, Mozambique, Guiné-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe of 500 000 to 800 000 refugees and ‘retornados’ (returnees), who moved to Portugal for a plethora of political, economic and social reasons. It was clear that the Portuguese State did not have the necessary housing stock to settle those newcomers. Thus, after ad-hoc and chaotic temporary solutions, the Fundo de Fomento da Habitação – FFH (Housing Development Fund), a State institution for promoting public housing, set out the Comissão para o Alojamento de Refugiados – CAR (Refugee Housing Commission), a housing programme specifically catering to those uprooted families. The CAR programme reflects the complicated entanglements between decolonization, housing shortage, social inequality and the making of the post-revolutionary territory. And yet, it was never the object of any specific study. The CAR proposed to create estates of prefabricated housing bought by the FFH to private suppliers, with municipalities ensuring the land for the development and promoting the urbanization works. During its short span (1976-1982), with some developments finished later, the CAR was hampered by bureaucratic and technical difficulties. Still, it produced dozens of estates in all of Portugal, from urban to suburban and rural contexts. In some cases, the CAR estates were also used to supply additional housing for locals in need, thus mixing the refugees with people from other rehousing operations. Despite its wide distribution in the territory and the exceptional character of its construction techniques and target demographic, the CAR quickly slipped into oblivion within architectural and urban history. Even in accounts of the experiences of post-colonial refugees, the CAR has been often underestimated. There are several difficulties in studying the CAR programme...

"The project introduces an innovative GET approach (Grounded+Ecological+Transition) to pro-green urbanism and climate-sensitive territorial regeneration, tackling key challenges in the Mediterranean. It aims to create new curricula and networks of knowledge exchange to develop sustainable strategies, processes, and solutions that promote resilient, inclusive, and contextually-sensitive urban environments. This capacity-building initiative merges the place-based architectural and planning traditions of South-European schools to strengthen education, research and collaborative practice in the South Mediterranean (Egypt, Morocco) and Western Balkans (Albania, Montenegro). The project addresses the priority common needs in the regions (1) low effectiveness in the implementation of global policies, (2) fragmented and uncoordinated uni-sectoral plans, and finally, (3) the tardiness of the HE systems in qualifying graduates to address real development challenges and societal needs. The resulting curricula will be developed, tested, and transferred in a consortium of three European and seven non-European universities, alongside NGOs, that will drive structural education reform introducing integrative curricula, methodologies, and practical education. Curricula development process includes: (1) hands-on seminars for teacher training in Europe, and (2) workshops to test, fine-tune and contextualize content and methodologies. A second result is the establishment of an interdisciplinary, intersectoral network of upgraded GET Labs Labs in non-EU countries. The GET Labs will involve non-academics in the green transition and engage them with academia in an educational framework that is adaptable, practice-oriented, and responsive to local cultures, ecosystems, and socio-economic conditions. Ultimately, the project envisions enhanced HE systems that prepare young professionals to lead the green, sustainable and inclusive development of the Mediterranean."

The dependence on imported food and fuel today is an acute urban challenge. Automobility altered the dynamics of urban living in a vicious cycle of producing urban sprawl, causing major environmental damage, and contributing to atomized living and loosening of community ties. The 15-minute City (15mC) is an alternative to the suburbanization model that seeks to generate hyper proximity by optimizing accessibility to services. This project will Hype Agriculture and Transit (HAT) in the 15mC paradigm exploring the potentials of urban agriculture, placemaking and green city visions combined with Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) as leitmotif for driving urban transitions towards green Proximity Oriented Developments (PODs). Hyping implies promoting or publicizing intensively urban (and peri-urban) agriculture supported by active and shared mobilities. The HAT project will link academic research with the business sector (for profit and non-profit organizations) to encourage, drive, and catalyze urban transitions towards with top-bottom green 15mC city planning policy and bottom-up food-related placemaking initiatives. It will produce empirical evidence and design knowledge on urban agriculture and TODs in a context of 15mC and develop viable business models for green PODs seeking to decrease the need to import food and fuel, as well as the dependence on the automobile.

In recent years the entire legal and regulatory basis of the Portuguese Planning System underwent an ambitious and far reaching reform. However, today like in the past, the major effort in the production of new legislation and regulation was not accompanied by a similar effort in the production of planning doctrine, here understood as a vast and coherent set of planning policies and implementation measures, able to improve, from a technical and scientific point of view, and under an evidence based approach, not only the quality of planning practice but also, and foremost,its proactive role, incorporating new and emerging topics and societal challenges and concerns, promoting change and opening new transition avenues into the future. This proactive role of planning, advocated here, contrasts with its traditional conservative standing in Portugal (and in other EU Member States), of looking backwards and passively accommodating, if not slowing down, change and the social and physical reform of our cities and metropolises.   Planning can, and should, constitute a transformative device in our cities in Europe and elsewhere, particularly in the present times and with a view into the long term. Indeed, current changes seem far more deep within the existing urban tissues experiencing profound recompositions of functions and activities, than in physical terms, strictly speaking,where past investments in infrastructures and in the built environment seemed to have exceeded the real demand and generated a surplus of the building stock that, some years later, still remains partially empty or underused.   The Spatial Planning for Change (SPLACH) programme draws on some of the main areas of knowledge of thre eresearch centres CITTA, DINÂMIA'CET-IUL and GOVCOPP. Two to three main areas of knowledge were identified for each centre: post carbon cities, transformative policies, spatial planning, socio-technical system, food security,services of general interest, tourism and modeli...

Project goals are to develop a comparative analysis of the metabolic behaviour of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area in different historical periods (from pre-industrial period to the present) and therefore assess the behaviour of urban form (generically) to the metabolic system in use in its own historical period under review. Additionally it is intended to identify elements of urban form in particular historical moments that were determinant to transform material and water flows in the city. The city urban structure will be assessed based on methodologies provided by (i) urban Material Flow Accounting research, ii) substance flow accounting and (iii) assessment of the morphological evolution of the urban form. Such assessment of the evolution of urban metabolism aims to evaluate drivers and successful responses to transform the current metabolism promoting a more sustainable urban environment.