Lisbon, Nov. 26, 2024 (Lusa) - Lisbon city council is carrying out studies on the city's flood map, car parking and sustainable tourism as part of the revision of the Municipal Master Plan (PDM), which will go ahead after the Lisbon 2040 Strategy has been drawn up.
"Once the Report on the State of Spatial Planning has been completed, we want to finalise the Lisbon 2040 strategic vision in May/June 2025, so that we can move forward with the revision of the PDM," said councillor Joana Almeida (an independent elected by the "Novos Tempos" PSD/CDS-PP/MPT/PPM/Aliança coalition) on Monday evening.
She was speaking as part of a joint hearing with the 1st and 3rd standing committees on Finance and Urban Planning, respectively, of the Lisbon Municipal Assembly (AML), on the city's proposed budget for 2025, totalling €1.359 million.
"What is already being done under the PDM? Studies, three types of studies: flooding, the city's flood map; a parking study, since it's clear that the PDM's rules are out of date today in terms of the city's parking policy; and the third study has to do with the study of sustainable tourism for Lisbon," revealed the town planning councillor.
In response to the municipal councillors, Joana EIS Almeida said that the construction of the Lisbon 2040 Strategy began in March/April this year, after the State of Spatial Planning Report was finalised.
"There is a Strategic Charter for the city 2010-2024 and now we have our Lisbon 2040 Strategy. What did we start with? We started by working within the city council across all the services, all the councillors, to look at the vision of the city within the city council," she said, adding that the process will now be open to outside participation.
To this end, the Lisbon city council will be organising meetings on the Lisbon 2040 Strategy from January next year, focusing on six areas: environment, climate and green structure; mobility and transport; economy and innovation; housing, education and health; territorial context and urbanism; and social cohesion, identity and culture.
"We're going to hold several debate sessions. We're going to hold other sessions aimed more at the local parish chairmen and also the members of the Municipal Assembly, so that everyone is involved," she explained.
At the moment, the municipality is also making changes to Lisbon's Municipal Urbanisation and Building Regulations (RMUEL), a process that is pending pending new legislation on Simplex, which is expected soon.
With the operationalisation of the Municipal Housing Charter, the Urban Planning department is working on the regulation of dwellings subject to a maximum rent or sale price, as a way of operationalising the production of private affordable housing.
"With regard to the maximum rent and sale price regulation, this was a concept that was in the 2012 PDM, which was never materialised and at the moment we are dependent on the Simplex amendment and the policies that come with housing in order to be able to move forward with this regulation until they have been consolidated," he said.
In order to increase transparency and efficiency, Lisbon city council is focusing on reducing bureaucracy in urban licensing, optimising the decision-making chain and sub-delegating final decisions to managers, she said.
In this regard, the municipality created the As Minha Obras (My Works) programme, which works as a ‘fast track’ for licensing simple building projects, in which processes are now considered in an average of two months, whereas "before they were in a pile that lasted up to two years".
The official also highlighted the creation of the Municipal Urban Planning Consultation Commission and the consultation tables, which bring together all the city council departments where decisions are made, to ensure internal coordination, producing a single clear and objective opinion on an urban planning project.
There's also a process manager for structuring projects of more than 1,800 square metres, she added.
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