Landscape and urbanisation processes in Ave’s Valley Region (Portugal): Inner-orders as expression of territorial resilience and new instruments of planning

Abstract

The paper addresses the urbanisation processes in Ave’s Valley Region, in the North of Portugal, over the last 60 years, as a way to explain the current landscape, which is hard to visually grasp or coherently describe. Like many contemporary urban areas that expanded considerably in the late 20th century, especially in-between traditional cities, the outcome is an almost chaotic (dis)organisation marked by blurred boundaries between countryside and cities. Historically grounded in dispersed rural settlement and shaped by the growth of the textile industry, the region exhibits a unique mix of housing, industry, and agriculture within the same lots. The study analyses both morphological and socio-economic dimensions, arguing that only by combining them can the identity of this landscape be understood. The accumulated layers of spontaneous urbanisation, now intersecting with planning practices and global economic influences, constitute a palimpsest of hidden “inner-orders” that may form the basis for new instruments of planning and territorial resilience.