PROCEEDINGS OF CITTA 2ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON PLANNING RESEARCH: PLANNING IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY

The second annual conference of CITTA took place in a time of economic decline, raising unemployment, and deep concerns about our near future. The general theme of the conference – Planning in Times of Uncertainty – aimed to capture these particular circumstances. Our objective was to gather a number of theoretical and practical contributions, coming from the planning research field, which would approach the challenges ahead from a positive and constructive perspective.

Planning as both a professional field and as a scientific discipline, has long seemed to be better equipped to deal with managing growth and change, rather then decline, complexity and uncertainty. However, we firmly believe that planners’ understanding of the spatial dimension of social, economic and environmental processes may provide an important help to find a way out of this current crisis. Our planning doctrines, paradigms, methods and techniques have to be revisited and reinvented to face the challenges ahead. In this difficult context, it is time to discuss the role of planning research to prepare a more balanced, sustainable and socially sensitive future.

This book contains a selection of the large number of papers presented at the conference. This selection reflects the work carried out at the CITTA research centre, as well as some of the most relevant research work carried out elsewhere in other Portuguese research centres and abroad.
Generally speaking, the organization of the papers closely follows the conference programme. The first part of this book includes Patsy Healey’s keynote speech and the presentations at the plenary sessions of two European research projects; MOPUS – Mobility Patterns and Urban Structures, and SUME – Sustainable Urban Metabolism for Europe. The second part covers seventeen papers included in the Planning and Environmental Assessment tracks. The third part gathers seven papers presented in the Urban Planning and Housing track. The fourth part, dedicated to Transport Planning and Logistics, includes six papers. Finally, the fifth part includes a number of short papers that did not follow the suggested format but, nonetheless, deserve publication in our opinion.

To all authors and contributors involved we would like to express our most sincere thanks.