Current city planning rules require a more demanding legislation regarding cartography and the accuracy used, registration and the connection with all the environmental issues concerning ecosystems or noise. There is also the need to ensure basic infrastructures within a complex process of approval that spans from making the project, its financing and execution, posing challenges to the municipality for the next 20 years. The period from 2011 to 2015, that translated in reduced economic activity and public investment, should be followed by a new phase that embodies the objectives and proposals to improve the city, even if this doesn’t necessarily imply population or urban growth. There is much to improve and mistakes from the past to put right. In this regard some of the proposals from the Strategic Plan for Urban Development made under the community framework 2020, like the Almoinha Garden, are already under way. This garden was even awarded first prize in the Public Spaces – Urban Rehabilitation category at the Lisbon International Fair 2019 Portugal Real Estate Exhibition. The conclusions of the Status of Space Planning Report prepared in 2019 by the municipal services, highlight the need for a city and municipality strategy that in addition to guiding simple urban management, provides a framework to municipal actions and policies that promote the population’s well-being, living and working conditions, leisure, health and the defence of the environmental balance and a rational exploitation of our resources. The need remains to change the city without necessarily turning it into a permanent stage. We must give way to pure and simple contemplation.
