(Em nome da Presidência Portuguesa do Conselho da União Europeia, a Diretora-Geral do Território, Dra. Fernanda do Carmo, teve a gentileza de me convidar para redigir um artigo para a revista do Programa ESPON (European Spatial Planning Observatory Network), a TerritoriALL. O número em causa inspira-se no mote “Green and Just Recovery, estando previsto um artigo da Professora Mariana Mazzucato. Hoje ao percorrer a agenda pessoal e as datas com entregas apercebi-me que o dia 10 de amanhã é a data para a entrega dos contributos. Por isso e desculpem a comodidade e o infringir a regra de escrever neste blogue em português, deixo-vos com o meu projeto de artigo de cerca de 900 palavras conforme o solicitado, em inglês, espero que não demasiado latino. O tema que escolhi é o da resiliência territorial. Penso que joga bem com a “Green and Just Recovery”.)
TERRITORIAL RESILIENCE: WHAT IS IT AND WHAT ARE THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR SPATIAL PLANNING?
The incidence of COVID-19 confirmed cases across regions and territories in general is varied in terms of health effects and lockdown procedures. The impact of health troubles combined with the pre-existing economic and social conditions in each territory generated a very complex array of pandemic territorial dimensions. The knowledge about the geography of pandemic effects is still in progress. There is a vast room to go in depth in this knowledge, particularly if the study of mobility of people could be improved with new data concerning the tracking of human flows before, during and after the lockdown decisions.
At least as far as the planning of the new programming period in Portugal is concerned, regions (planning regions), intermunicipal communities (NUTS III) and municipalities are fighting against the uncertainty of pandemic aftermath outlines. There is now a new and vibrant literature about what will be the main trends of change generated by SARS-COV 2 pandemic. This literature covers a very large number of themes and of typologies of change. From the effects on the global value chains, particularly relevant to more open territories, to the reconfiguration of labour processes and commuting flows, there is a vast of potential trends to target in the new programming period, not ignoring a vast array of sociological effects (consumption, housing demand, public space demand and others). However, the promising help of international literature doesn’t eradicate the problem of the aftermath uncertainty. The change trends identified by this flourishing literature must be confronted with local conditions and this is not an easy exercise.
Analysing regional, intermunicipal and local strategies submitted to public hearings and participation one word emerges as a strong common denominator in these strategies. That word is RESILIENCE. The spread of the word is so intense that one may ask whether or not it is just a fashionable matter. In the world of spatial planning the dissemination of fashionable vocabulary is very common. The phenomena in my view is explained by the diffusion of knowledge among spatial planning researchers and practitioners.
Curiously, in Portugal, the word resilience (of communities, of people and extending it of territories) began to be used concerning the preventive fight against rural and forest fires that, as it is well known, generated devastating and tragic effects, including deaths, in the second half of the 2010’s, in some Portuguese regions. Now resilience mentions are beyond the preparation of local communities to forest fires. Resilience is now invoked as a spatial planning reaction to pandemic issues. At the beginning, low density territories (not only in demographic terms but also in terms of entrepreneurship supply and industrial fabric) have been the first to revendicate resilience as a strategic priority. It was a direct consequence of forest fires being essentially produced in these territories. But, soon, other territories, including higher density ones, began to present resilience as a priority in their strategies for the new programming period. In this case, resilience was the key of proactive adaptations to learning-by-managing pandemics.
The concept has been also reinforced through the formulation of Portugal National’s Programme submitted within the framework of the Next Generation EU. The title of Programme is Plan for Recovery and Resilience. The resilience rhetoric finally arrived to the national planning step.
However, it seems to me that the fast dissemination of the concept doesn’t mean that it is already and well-internalised by economic and spatial planning. There is a lot of work to do in order to build a regional and local project design capacity, able to turn the highly invoked concept into an effective way to tackle the problems and challenges encompassed by the concept of territorial resilience.
Working for example on the concept proposed by Carlotta Quagliolo and others (1), territorial resilience is seen “as an emerging concept capable of aiding the decision-making process of identifying vulnerabilities and improving the transformation of socio-ecological and technological systems (SETSs)”. The main challenge of the emerging concept comes (I agree with the authors) from the trespassing (in celebration of the work of one my intellectual mentors, Alfred O. Hirschman) of the analytical barriers between different disciplines. Trespassing and not only surpassing is the point (2).
The definition proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sixth Assessment Report (2019), “the ability of a system to absorb disturbance preserving the same functioning structure, the capacity of self-organization and adapt to stress and change” helps us to understand that the principal challenge for spatial planning derives from the holistic approach required by the concept.
I think that it is what’s happening now concerning the generalised invocation of territorial resilience in Portugal, observed in the preparation of the new programming period 2021-2027. Spatial planning system and actors have a lot of work to do regarding (i) the metrics of being a resilient territory (what indicators should support the design of projects and programmes?), (ii) the selection of disciplinary approaches to make projects more robust, (iii) the definition of personal, institutional and local capabilities to be improved and (iv) the governance problems to solve in order to achieve effective resilience.
Sometimes, it seems that, independently of the paths we face, the same big questions stand before us and our inability to solve them. Discussing how to turn territorial resilience into an operative approach some of the big spatial planning challenges reappear: integration, management of interdisciplinarity, coordination, governance. As in so many other times, my long life of a spatial and strategic planning reflexive practitioner says to me that we should act and not be paralysed, although some key questions remain to be solved. It happens again with territorial resilience. As Bent Flyvbjerg showed us in 2001 (3), intelligent social action requires not only “episteme” (universal truth) or “techné” (technical know-how), but also “phronesis” (practical wisdom or prudence). It is a good way to end this short article.
[1] Carlotta Quagliolo and 13 other autors (2019), “Territorial Resilience: Toward a Proactive Meaning for Spatial Planning”, Sustainability, 11(8); see also Paolo Rizzi, Paola Graziano and Antonio Dallara (2018). “A capacity approach to territorial resilience: the case of European regions”. Annals of Regional Science, volume 60, pp. 285-328
[2] Albert O. Hirschman (1981). Essays in Trespassing – Economics to politics and beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
[3] Bent Flyvbjerg (2001). Making Social Science Matter. Why social inquiry fails and it can succeed again. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário