António Ferreira

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• PhD
• Principal Researcher at University of Porto

Urban agriculture (UA) initiatives have become a key area of research, policymaking and activism in reaction to the dominance of global for‐profit supply chains that have introduced significant food‐related vulnerabilities in urban areas. However, empirical evidence shows that UA initiatives encounter powerful implementation barriers imposed by the...

Adopting a blue cultural studies perspective, this article examines the local impact of the forced introduction of a knowledge-based and technology-driven economy in Europe to analyse its controversial effects on human well-being and environmental sustainability. Using the example of the boatyards of Caminha in the extreme northwest of Portugal, th...

Motorised traffic and car-centric environments restrict children’s commuting patterns and outdoor activities. This has adverse health consequences as it induces physical inactivity and reduces children’s well-being. Understanding parents’ daily routines and reasons to facilitate or restrict their children’s active and independent mobility is essent...

A mentalidade meritocrática dominou as sociedades ditas desenvolvidas. É uma mentalidade que nos torna pessoas egocêntricas, sem poder de compreender o mundo que nos rodeia e sem uma visão para o futuro. Faz-nos obcecar com a inovação, o crescimento económico, as métricas e a competitividade enquanto caminhamos a passo acelerado, que nem sonâmbulos...

This research focuses on examining how the pursuit of economic growth can contribute to urban shrinkage. In contrast to the prevalent definition of urban shrinkage that links population loss to insufficient levels of economic growth, this study examines the case of Coimbra, Portugal, where something different is happening. We hypothesise that Coimb...

Precarity is often interpreted as a neoliberal management strategy to maximize profts in private companies through the endorsement of insecure jobs, inadequate wages, and limited rights for workers. This interpretation, however, is unsuitable to analyse situations where the State endorses precarity in non-proft public organizations, for example,...

There is consensus in Portugal and elsewhere that accessibility planning constitutes a suitable replacement for conventional transport planning only when it relies on technocratic processes informed by sophisticated planning support tools fed by advanced accessibility metrics. This article identifies the historical roots of this consensus and asses...

This Position Statement aims to foreground the voices of Social Sciences & Humanities (SSH) researchers from Southern Europe (SE) and Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), working on sustainability-related challenges. Despite efforts, disparities remain in terms of the participation of SSH researchers in many countries from SE and CEE in research collabo...

Our mainstream mobility thinking is narrowly framed: it highlights the role of mobility in economic and urban growth, individual speed and system efficiency, but obscures its role in reproducing inequalities, and in driving unsustainable developments on a global scale. Critically, however, this narrative obscures our view on the increasingly proble...

This theoretical essay argues that the development of so-called ‘smart innovations’ is based on the monotonous application of seven standardized principles: electrification, digitalization, webification, datafication, personalization, actuation, and marketization. When a new smart innovation appears, what has typically occurred was the implementati...

When considering the environmental and economic crisis humanity is likely to experience in the near future, it becomes inescapable to ponder the values guiding decision-making and policy-making processes concerned with mobility and transport futures. Existing suggestions tend to centre around what this article denominates mobility austerianism. Thi...

This book draws on a wide range of conceptual and empirical materials to identify and examine planning and policy approaches that move beyond the imperative of perpetual economic growth. It sketches out a path towards planning theories and practices that can break the cyclical process of urban expansion, crises, and recovery that negatively affect...

The dominant transport planning narrative of our times is based on economic growth and capital accumulation, efficiency and predictability, time value and travel time savings, innovation and techno-centrism. These values are not necessarily problematic in all circumstances; however, we propose that it is necessarily a problem when a key activity se...

Contemporary debates about the smart city are being characterized by divergent views. While smart city proponents enthusiastically see it as a transformative vision for the future of urban areas, the skeptics bring to the fore extremely critical views. The present article critically presents the insights offered by Portuguese planners and public of...

Planners are frequently seen as urban growth facilitators. This allegiance to the urban and to growth has severely limited the societal relevance of the planning profession. It is time for planners to challenge such obstructive definition of their work, and to embrace broader and more exciting possibilities. This requires, first, understanding why...

The dominant tradition in transport planning and policy practice considers travel as a derived activity and travel time as an economic disutility. A growing body of literature is challenging this perspective, demonstrating that being ‘on the move’ is a rich experience interlaced with profound shared and individual meanings that can have positive im...

Innovation has become a guiding principle for European Union policy. Funding schemes, research, and planning across all Member States are expected to be innovative. This article provides a critical analysis of the drivers and effects of this evolution. While positive results have been achieved due to innovation policies, this article proposes that...

This article argues that a more critical approach to innovation policy within planning is needed and offers recommendations for achieving this. These recommendations entail rethinking the values, focus, speed, and legitimacy of innovations. It takes a critical perspective on how contemporary societies treat rapid innovation as having necessarily po...

A governança colaborativa constitui um tipo de processo de tomada de decisão e de ação coletiva em que entidades governamentais e agentes privados interagem como parceiros em pé de igualdade com o intuito de alcançar resultadosbenéficos para ambas as partes. Investigadores a favor do uso da governança colaborativa em Portugal tendem a apresentar os...

A variety of contemporary cities across the world are experimenting with innovative market-oriented planning instruments aimed at promoting urban regeneration processes. This research aims at offering a critical analysis of these innovations and how they are perceived by key stakeholders in Coimbra, Portugal, with special focus on Transferable Deve...

This article presents the intellectual legacy of Clare Graves, an American professor of psychology, and its relevance for planning as an academic and professional field characterized by worldview diversity and, therefore, also by dilemmas and conflicts. The argument is structured by the sequential answers to four questions: how to determine the mos...

Due to the persistent pursuit of economic growth, contemporary Western societies are inducing an increasingly deep economic, environmental, and social Crisis. Planning has significantly contributed to the pursuit of growth and, as a consequence, urban areas have experienced a number of problematic transformations. The establishment of an alliance b...

The benefits of the accessibility approach in transport planning are well-known and widely documented in the literature. However, in practice, most transport planning processes are focused on improving mobility and not on improving accessibility. Recent research has made it clear that what is blocking the accessibility approach are not the technolo...

This essay challenges contemporary Portuguese policies aimed at promoting tourism growth and the development of large transport infrastructures that make continuous economic growth possible. It considers the new Lisbon airport as an example. It uses a hypothetic-deductive methodological approach based on the concept of immotility to deliver its arg...

The problems faced by stakeholders in contemporary urban policy-making processes are becoming increasingly intricate and are emerging at an increasingly faster pace. Many of these problems are emerging as dilemmas between option A or option B. This article proposes that dilemmas can be addressed at three different levels of complexity. At the lowes...

Collaborative governance can be defined as a concerted type of decision-making and collective action in which government bodies and private sector stakeholders interact as equal partners with the aim of achieving outcomes of interest for both parties. Academic authors in favour of the adoption of collaborative governance in Portugal tend to present...

Transport planning became a techno-bureaucratic profession and this has important ramifications. The most important one for the argument developed here is that techno-bureaucratic transport planning is performed by physically inactive professionals. It presupposes that exclusively using technologies and processes that are disconnected from the subj...

The Portuguese-Speaking Area and the Future of Cities

This position paper - written for the Post-growth Conference that took place in Brussels in 2018 –highlights some key aspects through which planning and the degrowth/post-growth debate are connected. The paper begins with the positioning of the authors and presents an overview of current discussions in planning regarding mobility, innovation and ec...

Planning is a divided profession. Perspectives diverge on fundamental themes as to which theories, methodologies, and goals for the future should be embraced. Even though this plurality of views is a sign of intellectual resourcefulness within the field, it is disconcerting the extent to which planning finds it difficult to articulate itself to eff...

The emergence of fully Automated Vehicles (AVs) is expected to occur in the next 10 to 30 years. The uncertainties related to AVs pose a series of questions about what the societal consequences of such technology are. Mainly, what are the consequences of AVs regarding accessibility? This paper uses Geurs and Van Wee’s definition of accessibility to...

Transport planning practice is experiencing rapid transitions. This shifting professional environment is prompting lively and sometimes bitter debates about how transportation models should be used. While these models and their outputs play an increasingly more important function in transport-related decision-making processes, growing concerns emer...

Contemporary transport systems lack resilience. They are prone to congestion, vulnerable to multiple threats, constitute a great financial burden and are environmentally unsustainable. Research and policies have been developed aimed at solving these problems by means of improving transport technologies and governance; however, success has been limi...

The purpose of this study was to critically analyse the role that positive emotions, flourishing and mindfulness have among the elderly. It was explored how these concepts can contribute to successful aging and higher levels of happiness in this population. To this end, we conducted a non-experimental correlational study with 329 participants, aged...

The world is currently witnessing its largest surge of urban growth in human history; a trend that draws attention to the need to understand and address health impacts of urban living. Whilst transport is instrumental in this urbanisation wave, it also has significant positive and negative impacts on population health, which are disproportionately...

International conference on transportation and public health will bring together policy makers, practitioners and academics from multiple disciplines involved with transport planning, engineering, urban planning, public health, spatial and architectural design, environmental planning, and economics. Held with the US Centers for Disease Control and...

This paper investigates the relationship between cycling and mothers’ mobility in Amsterdam. Considering that mothers (still) tend to be responsible for transporting children and doing so on a bicycle may increase the difficulties of travel, the city’s push for cycling may not suit mothers’ mobility needs. Hence, this research aimed to uncover whet...

The UK Climate Change Act 2008 commits to a reduction of 80% in national GHG emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. This article explores what happens next where these top-level aspirations are expected to be turned into radical action. It does so through examination of the transport sector, which is a highly complex, fragmented, and multi-leve...

Climate change will create new stresses for populations across the globe. Whatever mitigation pathways are adopted the question is about how much, not whether, climatic change will impact on society. In particular, we can expect more extreme rainfall events, flooding and variations in temperature which our infrastructures were not designed to cope...

To understand the complex meanings of mobility and to engage in transport planning and management processes, a variety of disciplines, skills, and tools are potentially useful. Universities have a limited amount of time and resources to train future professionals though. This poses a problem: where should the teaching priorities be? By means of a w...

Planners typically conceptualise themselves as professionals not emotionally engaged with their work. However, in planning practice, there are many discretionary decisions to make and these are easily affected by emotions. The uncomfortable truth is that planning practice is emotionally loaded, but scepticism about emotions discourages research on...

Mobility has become a central aspect of many people’s lives. This is the natural result of the massive investments made in the transport sector throughout the world. These investments were made because the benefits provided by mobility are many. However, the negative effects resulting from mobility cannot be ignored when sustainability is considere...

Coat-benefit analysis (CBA) has become a key instrument for the evaluation of transport planning policies and projects in the Netherlands. Currently, this instrument is also used to evaluate integrated land-use and transport strategies. In Dutch transportts releted CBA the conceptualisation of benefits is directly related to a narrow understanding...

Urban densification has been presented as a general recipe to reduce travelling. The size of settlements was not considered particularly relevant in this proposal. Two arguments are presented that challenge the notion that densification of large cities leads to less travelling. The first is related to the internal dynamics of compact areas in large...

Mobility has a profound effect on the way people live and their understanding of the world. Transport planners therefore need a clear understanding of the ways in which mobility patterns are linked to issues such as perception of self, power, and culture. Consequently, the failures of the transport sector must be studied not in isolation but as man...

This paper critically examines the idea that planning theory experiences major theoretical shifts. Through a consideration of contributions from several academics, it is shown that different theoretical standpoints in planning persist and coexist. A model is proposed to aid understanding of this situation: the Hydra Model. This model views planning...

This paper examines the concept of accessibility using a set of analytical layers. The layers address the mobility, demond-related, temporal, perceptions-related and institutional features that influence accessibility levels. These can promote specific types of accessibility that decision-makers consider the most appropriate for the characteristics...