Evaluation and Evaluating the Community Initiative "URBAN"

The relevance of the relationship between evaluation and learning is widely acknowledged; as well as the importance of this learning process to support policy decision making and to judge the value of “what was done”, “how” and “with what results”. Although the activity of evaluation is not something new, but a field of knowledge with its own theories and practices, it is important to notice that there is great variability in the tradition and cultures of evaluation between countries.At the European level this issue gained a greater prominence with the publication of the Guide MEANS “Means for Evaluating Actions of a Structural Nature”, that in 1999 presented the main guidelines, standards and recommendations of the European Commission for the assessment of socio-economic development programs involving Community funding. Several were the changes proposed by this guide, among others, a greater focus on a more open and democratic process of evaluation. This paper presents and compares different conceptual and methodological frameworks created for the assessment of the European initiative Urban II, including the one that was used by the author in the context of an academic evaluation in the city of Porto. The comparative analysis of the results leads us to the recommendation for more democratic processes of evaluation and intervention, in order to improve their quality and accountability and promote the important goal of learning with this type of experimental initiatives.