Administrative organisation and spatial planning in portugal: A push towards soft planning spaces in europe?

Abstract

In the last decade, soft spaces and soft planning have emerged as new spatial planning and governance concepts, calling for a fresh approach to planning. The European Union has been partly responsible, not only by acting as a driver of soft planning, but also by encouraging the convergence and harmonisation of planning styles into a common European planning culture. However, soft planning does not replace statutory frameworks. Planning deals with both hard (mandatory and regulatory) and soft (non-statutory and non-binding) spaces, although this coexistence is not free of contention. Deviances and mismatches give rise to a number of ambiguities, inconsistencies and contradictions. This chapter examines the meeting ground between hard and soft planning, i.e. how EU-led, soft planning policy initiatives are accommodated and managed within statutory national planning systems, using the Portuguese system as a reference. The Portuguese administrative organisation and spatial planning system provide the background for the analysis, while the study focuses on soft planning initiatives endorsed by EU Cohesion Policy, namely in the last EU programming cycle of 2014-2020. The conclusions point to the tensions and detachments that emerge from the coexistence of EU-led soft planning and statutory spatial planning tools, despite the increasing convergence of the Portuguese system with European spatial planning rationale.