O bairro teatral: recreio da vida portuense

Tese de doutoramento, Estudos Artísticos (Estudos de Teatro), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2014

Evaluation and Evaluating the Community Initiative "URBAN"

The relevance of the relationship between evaluation and learning is widely acknowledged; as well as the importance of this learning process to support policy decision making and to judge the value of “what was done”, “how” and “with what results”. Although the activity of evaluation is not something new, but a field of knowledge with its own theories and practices, it is important to notice that there is great variability in the tradition and cultures of evaluation between countries. This paper presents and compares different conceptual and methodological frameworks created for the assessment of the European initiative Urban II, including the one that was used by the author in the context of an academic evaluation in the city of Porto. The comparative analysis of the results leads us to the recommendation for more democratic processes of evaluation and intervention, in order to improve their quality and accountability and promote the important goal of learning with this type of experimental initiatives.

Shopping malls and neoliberal trends in Southern European cities: Post-metropolitan challenges for urban planning policy

Whilst shopping malls have been explored at length by critical urban studies, there has been little exploration of their role in restructuring the practice of urban and spatial planning. This article uses the shopping mall as an object of study in the light of the neoliberal trends and post-metropolisation in Southern Europe, with the aim of exploring challenges for urban governance and planning practice and with a focus on the role of the ongoing economic crisis. A threefold exploratory framework – the ‘lost-in-time scenario’, the ‘messianic mall model’ and the ‘(im)mature planning explanation’ – is used to make sense of the local versions of shopping mall development in Lisbon (Portugal) and Palermo (Southern Italy). According to findings, we highlight the clash between the multi-scalar nature of shopping malls and the dominance of the municipal scale in regulatory planning frameworks, and the risk that shopping mall development (at least in Southern Europe) may replicate uneven development patterns, reproducing the pre-conditions of the crisis without helping to overcome it.