Information Systems for Urban Strategic Planning: The Case of Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to report the preliminary results and conclusions of a research project that is being led at the Urban, Territorial and Environment Planning Section of the Faculty of Engineering of Oporto University (Portugal)1 It consists in the research of how Territorial and Urban Planning (for different planning levels and implementation processes) supports an effective territorial and urban integration of immigrant people and ethnic minority groups, in what concerns their dwellings spatial distribution and features. It is emphasized the importance of the application of Urban Management Information Systems to support Strategic Planning Urban Processes, in what concerns regulation, orientation, coordination and control procedures of land use, that should stimulate the progressive integration of immigrant and ethic minority groups in a mutually beneficial way to themselves and to the urban progress as a whole. In order to identify the basic relations between immigrant and ethnic minority group's location and urban policies, the demographic evolution and the spatial distribution and features of dwellings were analysed. An integrated and interactive model, set up by different analytical tools was, thus, developed, as a case study, for the Oporto Metropolitan Area (Portugal), designed in order to support municipal agents decision-making processes: