The Municipal Master Plans of the Algarve

Abstract

The case under study is the planning of the Algarve, centred on the municipal master plans, but examined in their relationship with the Regional Spatial Planning Plan of the Algarve. These plans, which territorially overlap, present themselves within the national mainland context with specific characteristics. These are: programming, the existence and validity of the PROIAL prior to the other planned regional spatial planning instruments; the precedence of the validity of the PROTAL over all the municipal master plans within its territorial scope; territorial coincidence between a PROI, a de facto region, and a legal-administrative region; and the primacy of coastal character and tourism relevance of the territory. To this factual framework contributed certain causes, and from it arose conflicts, which must be carefully examined by confronting and testing the validity and efficiency both of the body of legal-urban planning norms contemporaneous with the drafting of the PROTAL and the Algarve’s municipal master plans, and of the evolution of this framework up to the current regime, inaugurated in 1998 by the Urbanism Framework Law.