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- A participação eleitoral em Portugal e na Europa: um puzzle de contradiçõesPublication . Barreira, Ana PaulaNas últimas décadas tem-se observado uma consistente redução na forma mais convencional de participação política por parte dos cidadãos: a votação nas eleições legislativas. Entre 1970 e 2011, a participação média nas eleições legislativas na Europa a 15 desceu 13 pontos percentuais, mas em Portugal o decréscimo foi ainda mais acentuado: 30 pontos percentuais. Se as eleições são um meio por excelência para a escolha dos representantes de um governo numa democracia, estes decréscimos merecem alguma reflexão. Embora a teoria sustente que o comportamento esperado de um eleitor é a abstenção quando considerados os custos versus os benefícios de votar, mesmo assim, nas décadas de 70 e 80 um maior número de cidadãos, encontraram a motivação suficiente para votar. Esse número era superior a 80% do eleitorado, na década de 70, na Europa. Este capítulo identifica, de entre um leque alargado de possíveis razões que explicam a participação eleitoral, as quais encontram evidência empírica contraditória, as razões institucionais que estão na base das diferenças encontradas entre países na Europa. Diferenças no número de partidos suscetíveis de serem eleitos para o Parlamento e na possibilidade de existirem governos em coligação emergem como as principais razões para os diferentes resultados encontrados na participação eleitoral na Europa. A análise encontra uma relação positiva entre o número de partidos com representação parlamentar e a participação eleitoral, bem como com a existência de governos em coligação em que o partido líder detém menos de metade dos lugares do governo no Parlamento. A existência, em Portugal, de um reduzido número de partidos com possibilidades de obtenção de representatividade parlamentar, resultando em governos predominantemente unitários, com alternância de governo em torno de dois grandes partidos, não parece incentivar a participação eleitoral.
- Stakeholders’ perceptions of appropriate nature-based solutions in the urban contextPublication . Ferreira, Vera; Barreira, Ana; Loures, Luís; Antunes, Dulce; Panagopoulos, ThomasThe concept of nature-based solutions (NBSs) has become increasingly popular among urban policymakers and planners to help them tackle the urban challenges arising from urban expansion and climate change. Stakeholders' involvement is a fundamental step, and stakeholders' perceptions and preferences can affect the development of NBS projects. This study aims to identify stakeholders' perceptions of the most critical urban challenges, the priority interventions, the preferred NBSs and the benefits of the NBSs, and to identify the determinants of these perceptions. A survey was administered to assess stakeholders' perceptions and views on implementing NBSs in two Portuguese cities with distinct urban, geographical, and socio-economic contexts. A binary logistic regression model was used to understand the determinants of the likelihood of the stakeholders' answers. According to the stakeholders, climate change is one of the main concerns in the urban context. It is usually associated with the incidence of heatwaves and water scarcity. Additionally, stakeholders are concerned about the low quantity and poor management of green spaces (GSs). They believe that it will be necessary to increase the GS, to recover some degraded areas, and to increase mobility. The preferred NBSs were planting more urban trees, making green shaded areas, and rehabilitating riverbanks. The main expected benefits were benefits for leisure and relaxation, reductions in air temperature, purer air, and improvements in public health. The results showed mostly coherent connections between the main concerns/priorities of the stakeholders and the perceived NBS benefits; however, some stakeholders did not present coherent connections, indicating low awareness of the current policy for implementing NBSs to overcome existing and future urban challenges.
- Residents' preferred policy actions for shrinking citiesPublication . Guimarães, Maria Helena; Nunes, Luis Catela; Barreira, Ana Paula; Panagopoulos, ThomasCities facing a continued and prolonged process of population decline require innovative urban regeneration policies complementary to growth-oriented policies. Losing inhabitants involves a decrease in economic activity and social capital. Therefore citizens' participation in defining policies to cope with population decline is being increasingly advocated. This research focused on four shrinking cities of Portugal to capture residents' knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of their city of residence as well as the policies and actions they prioritized for dealing with the population decline. The responses from 701 questionnaires show that economic revival policies as well as safety and accessibility policies were preferred. To put these policies into action, the recovery of industrial activity, the creation of business incubators, an improvement in law enforcement, and public lighting were ranked as top priorities. Rank-ordered logistic regression models were used to understand which variables influenced the residents' rankings. We found that the evaluation of the city's characteristics impact the ranking of the policies and actions. Hence, residents show a high level of coherence when engaging in a discussion at the level of policy-making. Therefore, the findings support residents' involvement in decision-making processes regarding urban regeneration in shrinking cities.
- Historical trajectories of currently shrinking Portuguese cities: A typology of urban shrinkagePublication . Alves, Daniel; Barreira, Ana Paula; Guimarães, Maria Helena; Panagopoulos, ThomasCities develop according to different patterns, undergoing population growth during some periods and decline (shrinkage) during others. Theories attempting to understand these behaviours include: 1) shrinkage is a natural process in the life cycle of a city, alternating with periods of growth, or 2) shrinkage is an extreme event that places cities into a continuous decline process with no return to population growth. We use retrospective data over a period of 130 years to study 25 Portuguese cities currently facing population decline, and show that both theories coexist in time and space. Five types of shrinking city are revealed: "Persistent Early Shrinkage" due to exodus from the rural periphery, "Metropolitan Shrinkage" due to the challenges of urban sprawl, "Recent Shrinkage" in de-industrialisation hotspots, "Cyclic Shrinkage" occurring in political transformation cores, and "Mild Shrinkage" due to life-style disamenity. As diversity of city population trajectories appears to be the norm in both Portugal and other Western European countries, the incorporation of this range into the management of urban transitions is recommended in order to reinforce city resilience. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
- Citizen participation in city planning and public decision assisted with ontologies and 3D semanticsPublication . Panagopoulos, Thomas; Andrade, Rita; Barreira, Ana Paula; Rocha, A.; Restivo, F.; Reis, L. P.; Torrão, SofiaSustainable development of cities implies investigating cities in a holistic way taking into account many interrelations between various urban and environmental problems. Urban models are created with the objective of helping city planners and stakeholders in their decision-making processes. Models which represent in 3 dimensions the geometric elements of a city are called 3D city models. These models are increasingly used in different cities and countries for an intended wide range of applications beyond mere visualization. Such uses are made possible by adding semantics to the geometrical aspects, leading to semantically enriched 3D city models. This can be achieved by using the primary data and ontologies to achieve the semantic enrichment of 3D city models as well as their interoperability with other urban models. Objective of the paper is to present how semantically enriched 3D city models and ontologies may help in sustainable landscape city planning.
- O Algarve e a inovação: o perfil regionalPublication . Barreira, Ana PaulaA região do Algarve apresenta uma diminuta interacção entre produção e consumo de novo conhecimento, não se traduzindo a investigação gerada em ambiente universitário em novos (as)produtos/tecnologias/processos. A fraca relação existente entre estas duas vertentes não tem criado os mecanismos favoráveis à existência de uma articulação entre procura e oferta de I&D. O artigo apresenta o diagnóstico da região no que se refere aos processos de criação e transferência de conhecimento, tendo como referência um determinado modelo desenvolvimento regional, onde tem predominado uma ausência quase total de ligação, entre meio empresarial e meio universitário. O objectivo é contribuir para uma reflexão mais largada sobre a internalização da inovação na região, para que, com base na experiência do passado, possam surgir as condições necessárias à alteração do modelo vigente, privilegiando-se as relações de interface entre os diversos agentes económicos: públicos e privados. Visando propiciar as condições de base para uma superior assimilação da inovação por parte dos agentes económicos regionais, os processos de produção e de transferência de conhecimento deverão estar ajustados às necessidades do meio empresarial, ao mesmo tempo que capitalizam os recursos humanos altamente qualificados disponíveis em determinadas áreas do saber, em particular, nas ciências do mar, na biotecnologia, nas ciências agro-alimentares e no turismo.
- Relevance of ecosystem services and disservices from green infrastructure perceived by the inhabitants of two portuguese cities dealing with climate change: implications for environmental and intersectional justicePublication . Barreira, Ana; Andraz, Jorge; Ferreira, Vera; Panagopoulos, ThomasGreen infrastructure provides ecosystem services (ESs) and disservices (EDSs), although EDSs are understudied. By considering both, this study contributes to the literature. The inhabitants' perception of the importance of ESs/EDSs is assessed through a survey in two Portuguese cities facing extreme climatic events. "Heat reduction" and "contact with nature" are the most perceived ESs while "risk of fire" and "excessive water consumption" are the most perceived EDSs, respectively, in Elvas and Faro. Using rank-ordered logistic regression models, this study finds that the relevance of ESs/EDSs is perceived differently throughout the different areas of the cities, with Elvas revealing the highest signs of environmental injustice, since the importance of ESs is perceived differently by the inhabitants, specifically those inhabiting impoverished areas. The inhabitants perceiving heatwaves acknowledge less relevance to some ESs and more relevance to several EDSs. Gender, age, and income affect the perceived relevance of some ESs/EDSs, signalling intersectional injustice.
- Exploring residential satisfaction in shrinking cities: a decision-tree approachPublication . Barreira, Ana Paula; Agapito, Dora; Panagopoulos, Thomas; Guimarães, Maria HelenaThe number of cities experiencing population decline has been increasing worldwide. Despite the existence of theoretical propositions of shrinkage as an opportunity to increase levels of residential satisfaction, the issue has not been addressed empirically. This article contributes to fill this gap by assessing, through survey, the residential satisfaction of inhabitants of four shrinking Portuguese cities. Data were analysed by means of a tree-decision approach: the Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection analysis. A sense of safety is the feature that best discriminates inhabitants' level of residential satisfaction. The results show that shrinkage due to deindustrialisation processes is detrimental to residential satisfaction.
- Factors driving the population growth and decline of portuguese citiesPublication . Barreira, Ana Paula; Ramalho, Joaquim J. S.; Panagopoulos, Thomas; Guimarães, Maria HelenaDespite the worldwide trend of urbanisation, data reveal that some cities are growing whereas others are losing inhabitants. To assess such dynamics in Portuguese cities, demographic, employment, housing, and climate variables were analysed as possible drivers of population change for the period 1991-2011. Panel data models show that higher shares of employment in the secondary and tertiary sectors, higher maximum temperatures, and a higher proportion of middle-aged vacant houses act as pull factors attracting inhabitants, whereas a higher unemployment rate is a push factor for cities.
- Pull attributes of the Algarve: the tourists' viewPublication . Barreira, Ana Paula; Cesário, Marisa; De Noronha, Maria TeresaThe Algarve is an internationally recognized tourist destination. The identification by tourists of the most valued attributes of this destination helps to explain the touristic demand for the Algarve. As such, the aim of this paper is twofold: to understand how tourists' socio-demographic profile influences their assessment of the main pull attributes of the Algarve, and to understand how such assessment affects the length of stay. Data were collected using a face-to-face questionnaire survey of 554 recently arrived tourists. Our results generally support previous findings. However, two results are unexpected: (1) despite "sun and beach" being the most valued attribute of the Algarve, more educated tourists value the attribute in a complementary manner with other attributes; and (2) first-time tourists from northern European countries are less impressed with the attributes of the Algarve, and, consequently, stay for shorter periods of time compared with other tourists.