Current Issues in Urban Planning Law in Portugal

Abstract

The present article seeks to provide an overview of the most significant problems in current Portuguese urban planning law, that is, those of a structural nature which therefore belong to the essential core of the country’s urban planning legal framework.

After highlighting that Portuguese urban planning law has only recently reached maturity (as a result of the transformations of the last ten years), the article briefly analyses, on the one hand, general problems relating to the sources of urban planning law, which affect the system as a whole rather than a specific domain (this includes an assessment of the main shortcomings of urban planning legislation and of the most important urban development plans, namely the municipal master plans), and, on the other hand, sectoral problems, which arise in certain areas, chapters or specific aspects of urban planning law. Among the wide range of “problem areas”, the following are addressed as being the most significant: the distribution of competences between the State, the autonomous regions and local authorities in the field of urban planning; the relationships between the different types of territorial plans; urban planning instruments and the constitutional principle of equality; the forms and legal instruments for the implementation of plans; and the mechanisms of public administration intervention in urban and urbanisable land.

Throughout the text, reference is made to certain solutions set out in Law no. 48/98 of 11 August, which establishes the “Foundations of Spatial Planning and Urban Planning Policy”, and an analysis is offered of its likely impact on the resolution of some of the problems affecting current Portuguese urban planning law.