1 Tese de Mestrado Fernando Barros-parte II - Universidade do Minho

ABSTRACT
Mestrado em Engenharia Municipal
This document analyses changes in the process of urbanisation, observed in
the last two decades, generating two new phenomena: Counterurbanization and
Naturbanization.
These two new concepts of population movements have been named
counterubanization, in studies developed in England by Berry Champion and
Naturbanization in research developed in Spain by Maria José Prados.
The first is described as the movement of the populations of the cities to
peripheral areas and the second as the movement of people from urban areas to
rural areas of great landscape value and richness that evolved to Natural and
National Parks. Both movements occurred in industrialized societies.
These concepts, allow the explanation how the changes of attitudes and of
mentalities fostered with worries about environmental factors, have induced the
population to find new places with better quality of life, especially in natural
protected areas as inside the National Park of Peneda Gerês. In fact, after one
initial concentration of the population in urban centres in detract of rural places, a
new trend is evidenced by the return of population to these areas. This different
pattern of behaviour is evaluated through the analyses of data compiled under the
revision process of a Municipal Plan, where the people expressed their will to shift
the land use attributed to their plots among other requests. This phenomenon has
been framed by the two mentioned concepts of counterurbanization and
naturbanization and it was confirmed that proximity to major urban centres and to
main roads acts as a catalyst for these phenomena.
New challenges are proposed to the Portuguese society in the present days,
a society that needs to mature its land-use policies in face of the human
desertification of last two decades in the rural areas and corresponding
implications. Nevertheless, some new evidences, albeit of small intensity can be
located in territories of high landscape value.
Análise do Fenómeno da Naturbanização ao nível de PDM – Aplicação a Terras de Bouro
v