Overview

The profound transformations experienced by Portuguese society over the last two decades pose today a set of relevant challenges for public decision, whether in the field of the economy and institutional integration in the European context or in terms of the provision of welfare or the new challenges in the face of environmental and health risks. In truth, the multiple and differentiated impacts of the pandemic on Portuguese society in the last two years seem to have made the imbrication between new and old vulnerabilities more perceptible, which must be faced and responded to urgently.

In this sense, it became clear that there was a need to resume the discussion and reflection around the production processes of structuring and democratically sustained political choices, capable of designing a strategic development horizon in the face of these multiple challenges. To face them, planning issues gain a new urgency and centrality in democratic societies. 

Hence, the Observatory on Crises and Alternatives of the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra intended to summon the Portuguese society to a debate on public and democratic planning as a participatory process of public decision empowerment. The objective was to discuss and understand what planning means; what the relevant actors are; the scales involved; the nature of the process and the problems of each time; the results to be achieved; the costs of the absence of planning; the relationship between deliberations and their execution; the relationship with private dynamics and with public policies; the way to deal with the great urgencies resulting from climate change and environmental unsustainability and the ways in which political cycles foster the medium and long term logics and the democratic participation inherent to planning.

This initiative is the culmination of a series of seminars that aimed at building a sustained reflection on planning issues. It takes the form of a Public and Democratic Planning Colloquium that brings together all those interested in this topic and will take place in Lisbon on 16 and 17 January 2023.

Scientific Committee: Alexandre Abreu, Álvaro Garrido, Ana Costa, Ana Drago, João Cravinho, João Ferrão, João Ferreira do Amaral, João Rodrigues, José Reis, Manuel Carvalho da Silva, Paulo Pedroso, Ricardo Paes Mamede

Other information | This event is free of charge, subject to registration and grants a certificate of participation

Partners: ECPOL (Portuguese Association of Political Economy); ISCTE-IUL; IPPS

Support: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation,  PlanAPP 

Contacts: coloq.plan@ces.uc.pt | 211 353 775