Revision of the Portuguese Land Use Law: Impacts on Planning Policies

The Portuguese Land Use Law is currently under revision. This law dates from 1976 and ithas failed to keep up with the socio-economic evolution of the country during the last threedecades and a half, being completely mismatched from reality. Within this context, thecentral theme of this article focuses on the identification of problems, inefficiencies andhindrances to urban development that accrued from the application of the currently enforcedlaw.The pursued methodology founds on the analysis of the homologous Spanish law. Theexpected outcomes consist in the identification, through compared law, of some proposals tosurmount these problems, inefficiencies and hindrances, namely in order to:-assure all citizens access to housing (avoiding real estate speculation); control urban sprawl, and recover most vacant dwellings; fight urban corruption, assuring higher transparency and citizen participation in urbanprocesses;allocate the surplus-values engendered by public planning decisions for the socialinterest in general.These proposals materialize, namely through: the settlement of a sustainable urban development; a new concept of land property rights; renewed assessment of the duties of landowners and other stakeholders involved inurban development processes; alternative land valuation criteria, according to the current and real value of land; application of different land management tools.This paper is relevant for planning education, practise and scholarship. Indeed it adds to thecurrent debate on land use instruments and policies, in order to support more efficientplanning policies that better fit real needs, and able to surmount the prevailing crisis, thuscontributing to territorial sustainable development and to citizens' quality of life