SOTUR Team Convenes Key Transport Stakeholders to Link Development Scenarios to Local Realities

What does the future hold for Portugal’s cities?  Will national policies spark a renewed economy? Will population and economic growth stagnate?  And given the possible scenarios of the future, what strategies should cities adopt today?

The MIT-Portugal Program’s Strategic Options for Integrating Transportation Innovations and Urban Revitalization (SOTUR) team raised these questions on July 9^th, 2010, as it convened a group of Portuguese engineers, architects, politicians, and other experts in Lisbon to continue ongoing discussions of urban and transportation planning and policy in Portugal.  In the last of three stakeholder workshops, the research team presented the results of two-plus years of work in urban systems modeling, developed under the SOTUR project, which aims to identify possibilities for leveraging the land use-transportation interactions to enhance urban revitalization in Portuguese cities.

The analysis presented built on the ideas developed during the previous SOTUR stakeholder workshops, which began early this year. The series of three workshops was designed to collaboratively develop scenarios of the future; identify possible intervention measures; and, ultimately, better link the integrated urban development-transport models developed by the SOTUR team with local reality and stakeholders.  In the first two workshops (held in Coimbra in January and Porto in March), participants helped to construct three potential future scenarios—subsequently named “New Dynamics,” “Social Crisis,” and “Technology as a Way of Development.”  The research team used these narratives of the future as the background parameters in applying integrated quantitative models, the methodology and results of which were presented last Friday.

The SOTUR team hoped that, after seeing the demonstration of modeling techniques, stakeholders would consider how the methods might benefit their organizations and, more generally, planning in the country.

Stakeholders praise candid discussions

Several stakeholders said they benefitted from the discussions of how to improve urban policy.  Among them was Margarida Saavedra, of the Empresa Pública de Urbanização de Lisboa (Public Development Company of Lisbon), who said, “I think the achievement is that we all started to think about it and to be concerned.  Maybe some of the conclusions [about potential policies] are not that suitable for Lisbon because we have a different reality.  But the fundamental thing was to meet with all the people—because they are people who you do not meet every day—and to hear what they have to say.”

Speaking on how Lisbon’s public transport company, Carris, had benefitted from the workshops, Carlos Miguel said that he had gained new ideas from the events, but that his company’s limited authority over issues other than transport continued to present a barrier to further action.  Catarina Marcelino, of the Instituto da Mobilidade e dos Transportes Terrestres (Institute for Mobility and Land Transport), also agreed on the importance of beginning dialogue, but noted that policy makers needed to do more to find solutions for particularities of Lisbon.

The meeting also gave MIT students the opportunity to see their work in context.  Li Weifeng, Ph.D candidate in MIT’s Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, said of the workshop, “I believe the visit in Lisbon, especially the participation in the stakeholder workshop, has helped to broaden my understanding of the Portuguese's outstanding concerns.”  Others visiting from MIT included Chris Grillo, Shan Jiang, Lisa Rayle, and Yi Zhu, who joined MPP Transportation Systems student Luís Martinez, Camila Garcia, and Maria Spandou from the Instituto Superior Técnico and Nuno Pinto and Ashenafi Aregawi from the University of Coimbra.  The workshop was led by Professors António Pais Antunes (Coimbra), Rosário Macário (IST), and Chris Zegras (MIT).

After lunch, Professor Joseph Ferreira of MIT demonstrated the capabilities of the online, interactive data portal developed as part of the project.  He stressed the value of data-sharing and urged stakeholders to collaborate in data gathering.  The interest of stakeholders in this suggestion was encouraging, yet a reminder that the workshop had focused on methods—effective policy solutions still lay in the future.

According to Catarina Saavedra of EPUL, “We have a long way to go before we have results.  But we have a good start and the next step is to work together because we all have different experiences and have something to contribute.”

You may download the presentations from the SOTUR workshop.