Social and economic transformations, linked to changes in value systems, have led to a relative shift from mass tourism to new forms of holiday‐taking, including rural vacations. These trends are illustrated by a case study of Portugal, which experienced a massive growth of tourism, especially in coastal areas, from the 1960s. To some degree, this supplemented an older tourism tradition, based on inland spas. The growth of ‘green’ tourism in recent decades, facilitated by social and economic changes, has led to the revival of many such spa towns, as well as the emergence of new forms of rural tourism such as farm tourism, turismo da habitaçâo and hunting activity holidays. The overall impact of these new forms of tourism on rural development is, however, limited, and it should be considered as one strategy, among many others, for economic diversification.

At European level, the different methodologies used for the classification of urban areas rely on the spatial allocation of population to 1 km2 grid cells, failing therefore to identify small-sized settlements that play an important role in urban systems mostly composed by small towns, such as the Portuguese. This paper reports the development of alternative methodologies which overcome the problem stated, successfully enabling the automated recognition and delimitation of small-sized urban settlements – the prime goal of this work. Two alternative methodologies (A and B) were developed and later compared. The settlements identified by A are clusters of census tracts, previously classified using an urban–rural typology proposed by the authors. In B an adaptation of the Urban Morphological Zones methodology published by the European Environment Agency was used, whereby settlements are clusters of specific Land Use/Land Cover classes combined with the urbanised areas defined by Municipal Master Plans.

No abstract

Over the last decade, soft planning has become an increasingly visible concept in planning literature. Since the term soft spaces was firstly coined, soft planning has been used to describe a growing number of practices that occur at the margins of statutory planning systems. However, as soft planning-related literature proliferates, so does the diversity of approaches and planning practices it encompasses. Such diversity fuels long-standing questions about what can or cannot be considered as soft planning as well as about its usefulness for today’s planning theory and practice. To shed light on this still unclear conceptual outline, this article divides the soft planning debate into five contextual components (ethos; governance; politics; policies; spaces; and scale) while paying particular attention to the relationship between soft planning and strategic spatial planning. The aim is to foreground soft planning as a concept, and add clarity and awareness on the challenges, the risks and opportunities, planning currently faces.