Lisbon Spring Conference
Lisbon , 5-8 May 2007 - Report of the Spring Conference: Multi Intensive Land Use / closing event.
Lisbon is a city with 500 thousand inhabitants and 400 thousand commuters entering its limits every day by car. Within the Metropolitan Area of 2,5 Million inhabitants, there are 70 thousand empty houses, an exodus of 30% in 30 years.Lisbon is facing huge problems like the desertification of its centre and the heavy mobility of the suburbs legacy. Although with beautiful neighbourhoods, hills and alleys that together shape the cosmopolitan Lisbon, in 2006 the city hosted the IFHP Spring Conference to discuss the Multi-intensive land use theme.
One of the main aims of the closing event of the MILUnet INTERREG project was to disseminate the results and the working method developed and to explain and discuss the results.
“The MILUnet network is a European network dedicated to the generation, collection, exchange and transfer of knowledge on the subject of Multifunctional Intensive Land Use (MILU) as a means to realize more sustainable (urban) development in Europe.”
Eleven selected locations of Lisbon’s Metropolitan Area were the basis of the working practice methods experienced in several workshops. Besides the social events and other organized excursions, 11 different field trips were also organized in order to give a closer perspective on the urban reality of those case studies.
The conference registered 360 participants and its programme was divided between keynote speeches, presentations of Milunet cases (Walter Buser, Paula Russell, Giancarlo Leoni), introduction to the Implementation Lab by Volkmar K. Pamer, several parallel sessions and the presentations of the workshop’s results. 
Keynote speaker Martin Courollon (Architect of Metro Arquitetos, São Paulo, Brazil) brought to the audience a set of projects of Metro Arquitetos (the architecture atelier of Paulo Mendes Rocha – winner of Pritzker Price 2006) in several cities: Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (Brazil), Paris and Vigo. The evolution of the relationship between the city of São Paulo and its river was explored as well as how the technical construction of the territory has shaped the development of the industrial metropole.
Fernando Nunes da Silva (Professor Urban and Transports, Technical Superior Institute at Technical University of Lisbon) introduced the audience to Lisbon’s urban growth and planning context in the Metropolitan Area enlightening the audience about its challenges and problems in the present and future.
Cliff Hague (Past President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, President of the Commonwealth Association of Planners. Professor of Planning and Spatial Development at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh) discussed the past and present of the Institutional arrangements.The key message can be summarized in few words: “Reinvent planning, change institutions”.
The “Reinvention of the planning” paper could be implemented if we based our action in 10 key principles:
- Sustainability
- Integrating planning with budgets
- Transparent, accountable planning
- Planning with partners
- Subsidiarity
- Market responsiveness
- Access to land
- Appropriate tools
- Pro-poor and inclusive
- Cultural diversity.
Hague stated also that planning had to be an inclusive process, strategic and local, integrative, participatory and creative. “Planning should embrace cultural diversity and should be rooted in concerns for equity. There’s no sustainable development without sustainable urbanisation – and no sustainable urbanisation without effective planning”. Despite the surprise of the creative Hague’s song: “Planners Rap” soon the audience cheered and dove into the spirit of the lyrics singing along the music of change. Two blocks of parallel sessions were held at the same time of the MILUnet implementation Lab workshops, focusing on the themes of multi intensive land use and estuarine developments.Although the programme was completely defined from the beginning a great deal of surprise was kept until the last minute. The final step of this journey was a surprisingly interesting “House of Lords” debate about controversial statements such as: “We should get rid of engineers?!”; “Urban planning needs an Al Gore?!”. This exercise moderated by Peter van der Geer, was very dynamic and stimulated a creative interest from the participants.
Last Updated @ Thursday, 06 March 2008