New Municipal Master Plan aims to attract more companies and investment

The next Municipal Master Plan (PDM) focuses on creating conditions to attract companies and investment, and thus reinforce the city's centrality at the metropolitan and national level. Efforts that combine with the international projection of the brand "Porto.", as a seal that combines modernity with tradition, a city focused on the future and innovation, which simultaneously preserves its character and protects traditional commerce. 

The last few years have inscribed in the history of the city of Porto a dynamic, attractive period, mirrored in numbers that reveal a fast-growing economy, based on attracting foreign investment and tourism. 

Even in the middle of a pandemic, the impact of the crisis is not affecting the installation of new companies in Porto, a recent study concluded.

The formula is therefore already invented, and in the next PDM it will be improved, with the creation of zones of economic activity, be they in the business or service sector, which will be defined in the soil qualification plan. They correspond to new areas of work and urban identification, in line with the principles of sustainability and the creation of green spaces, transcribed in the Environment chapter. 

The strategic densification of specific areas of the city, to encourage economic and business activities, presents itself as another of the bets of the strategic document, merging, in this point, with the objective of reinforcing the offer of housing. The change in the paradigm in relation to the PDM still in effect, from 2006, resides a lot in this issue: preventing the commuting from work to translate into a real headache. If it is certain that teleworking has democratized with the pandemic, it is also equally true that citizens place a high value on this parameter in measuring their quality of life, the Municipality understands, which also intends to promote increasingly green and conscious mobility.

These being the main lines envisaged by the Porto City Council for the installation of new companies and businesses, and consequently generating more jobs, there are also clear ideas to protect street commerce, which may be densified over the next decade. Among the novelties, the municipality takes on the commitment in the next PDM to reduce urban rates in operations that promote this type of trade.

Currently, this incentive arises through projects such as the local promotion platform, "Shop in Porto", which already brings together more than 1,300 members or, in another context, with the protection of historic stores recognized under the municipal "Porto de Tradição” program. 

In addition to business and commerce, the new PDM will seek, over the next ten years, to take advantage of the "approach to the university", points out City Councilor Pedro Baganha.

For this reason, it aims, as an objective in this area, to enhance the role of university campuses as catalysts for the transformation of the territory. And the one that needs to be transformed the most, recognizes the councilor, is the eastern part of the city.

The Strategic Masterplan for Campanhã includes an eco-district, the Porto Innovation District Satellite, among other projects, and the largest of them all - the conversion of the Slaughterhouse. These dynamics, anticipates the Municipality, will be positively influenced to the north of the territory of Campanhã by the Campus of Asprela, and to the south by the dynamics of the Historic Center.