Portugal is not just a landscape, it is also Lisbon
The reorganization of the city of Lisbon was not designed from an Excel sheet, but from the “Strategic Letter of Lisbon”, when it foresees a “City of Neighborhoods, Cosmopolitan”. The number of parishes was reduced to less than half, but with new skills, identified before defining a territory and with new designations, corresponding to the identity of the group. The planned resources were calculated based on what is already spent in each of the functional areas, by intervention area. The decentralization of resources cannot determine an increase in global public expenditure. And so it was. What was not approved in the operation, 2012, and execution in 2015, did not have until the maintenance of the reform, with the respective review of the resources transferred to August 2015. In addition to the annual update by applying the annual inflation index for the municipality from Lisbon.
To ensure a more general consensus, the outer limits of the new parishes are not redrawn. However, the necessary criticism was safeguarded, not based on egos or partisan criteria. With rationality and thoughtfulness, it was possible to establish parishes in the capital with a larger and more balanced dimension. And, even today, today, there is a need for a new review of resources, of the capacities for reflection, without the need for small size, or a sense of return. If there was a will from politicians who manage the new destinations of the city, we would already be in the transition from the competences currently delegated by contracts – which took nine months to see the light of day after the last ones – to the law themselves, such as auto competences and taking the opportunity to strengthen the governance capacity of parishes in the capital. Without receiving and, even less, without access.
Lisbon also needs the decentralization and regionalization of the country. It needs the decentralization of the State, because the city has to better manage the public facilities they offer in areas such as proximity education, promoting greater social balance. Without receiving responsibility in the decision. It needs the regional when the less populated areas have access to public services and so we grow more in the territorial distribution of private projects, and so everyone grows. Therefore, it is important for the capital city of the country that the different regions and cities grow, as employment and quality of life reach everyone. This is the main mission of the country’s regionalization by applying subsidiarity: it is necessary to end the prejudice that centralized decisions are best for the whole country, as if the whole were not also the sum of the parts, in equality, in a relationship of equity between regions. .
Without the Regional, apparently, it takes advantage to be more efficient in the management of urban resources, but it can be more efficient for the use of resources and sustainable urban growth, but it can always be used with a desert to revitalize, and with a disproportionate use to the territory that we intend to revitalize, and with a disproportionality to the territory that we want in the global, it takes away quality of life for all.
Member of the Assembly of the Republic for the PS and former president of the National Association of Parishes