The impact of highways on territorial organization in Portugal | Opinion
The way in which the population is distributed in Portuguese territory has changed a lot in recent decades. Between 1981 and 2011, the continent’s resident population grew from 9.3 million residents to around 10 million. It is a growth of 7.6% which, of course, tells us nothing about the huge differences that exist at the local scale. In fact, 98 municipalities of its population more than 20% in this period. In general terms, the population increased in the range between Viana do Castelo and the Algarve, having decreased in the country (that immense “interior”…).
Decreased, Lisbon and Porto too, and that in 260 thousand inhabitants, respectively. The population of the other municipalities in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon (AML) and Porto (AMP) increased significantly: over 600 thousand in the AML and 333 thousand in the AMP. Sintra, for example, went from 226 thousand inhabitants in 1981 to 378 thousand in 2011.
All this is reflected in the artificialization of soils. We often hear from an older person: “Here, before, there were only fields, now it’s just buildings”. In fact, using cartographic data from the European CORINE Land Cover inventory (obtained from satellite images), we estimated that the urban area considered increased by 55.9% between 1990 and 2012, from 2.92% to 4.55 % of the continent’s total area. That is: a growth of 1454 kmtwo in just over two decades or, if you prefer, the equivalent of nearly 7,000 football from a new urban area each year.
In AML alone, this growth was 199 kmtwo, which is equivalent to more than twice the area of the city of Lisbon. The data they analyze confirm that much of this soil artificialization occurred in a fragmented and poorly planned way. The buildings were spread a little everywhere, often leading to the construction of more or less dispersed residential areas.
In the same period, Portugal made an investment in the extension of its huge road network, namely, in the construction of a vast network of automobiles. Common sense suggests, from the outset, that highways must have some kind of influence on the dynamics described above. The results we arrived at in the investigation we have developed The construction of the economic highway network not only for the concentration of the country’s population and economic activity, but also to intensify the phenomenon of suburbanization in large metropolitan areas and expand the dynamics of urban territory in general.
It will also have had an effect on the number of people working outside the municipality of residence, which means that highways were designed, as might be expected, to increase the geographical mobility of the workforce.
These elements should make us reflect. The growth of extensive and sparsely dense suburban areas generates a large number of commuting, mainly dependent on the private car. Take the case of Lisbon. In 2011, the city had 548 thousand inhabitants in 2021 (546 thousand, according to the Provisional Census Results). However, more than 426,000 people entered the capital daily to work or study, and in 2018, according to data from the city council, around 370,000 vehicles would enter Lisbon per day. This represents high costs, both in terms of preventing CO2 and other polluting gases, and in time lost in transit…
In expansion, fragmented and discontinuous expansion involves urban and sustainable development that is compatible with development that is sustainable and equitable. For example, dispersed and dispersed areas and public services are more expensive than doing it in more compact areas; this, in turn, puts pressure on city council budgets. The development of economically viable public transport networks also becomes more difficult, as does the insertion of people into the labor market. There will even be costs in terms of the general health of the population, not least because in areas with characteristics such as people tend to walk or cycle less on a daily basis.
The Portuguese economy is organized by various types of structural inefficiency, and the way in which its territory is not territory (it is no exception) Our research suggests that, for the present situation, unanticipated or not properly valued effects of the construction of the motorway network contributed the country’s infrastructure – such an exercise would be to trigger – but before discussing a specific set of impacts).
It should be noted that it is very likely that motorways will not produce general effects if the context is right. We know that the first generation Municipal Plans were very permissive with regard to urban construction, and that, as municipal councils, at the time, they had few human resources specialized in territorial planning. Added to this is a rent freeze, which allows for the blocking of a market for the possibility of development in large cities, and, equally, incentives for bank credit for long-term acquisition, which stimulate the construction market.
The Portuguese economy finds itself today in a complex historical moment. Productivity growth has been low for many years. Emigration is high. In the EU, GDP per capita of almost all Eastern European countries has it faster than Portugal. Overcoming this delay necessarily implies obtaining efficiency gains in the use of available resources. The smart resource is highlighted, the resource should not be centralized and can be designed as smart, and it should not be absolutely sustainable.
As the important country launches an investment cycle (example in railroad), energy will have to evolve, increasingly, in the sense of articulating policies and knowledge between improving different sectoral areas: transport, spatial planning, environment and planning, public health, etc.
The example must remain a powerful tool for the cost of the socio-economic structure that our society may have to be able to de-structure as great complements between public policies and investments in public infrastructure.
The authors write according to the new orthographic agreement