Joana de Mesquita Lima

Post-conflict cities are often understood as an outcome of fragmented governance, where coordination is limited, power is centralized and where spatial planning and urban development are often neglected and under-resourced across governance scales. This paper examines how temporal misalignment between framework systems contribute to uneven urban development of post-conflict cities. Focusing on Dili, Timor-Leste, this paper analyses how the different framework systems of planning, legislation and budgeting interact to shape the city. To this end, analysis of public documents relating to each of these systems is reviewed, such as government programs, existing studies, legislative documents and budgetary books and data. The key outcomes are mapped on a timeline to identify lags and gaps within and between these frameworks. Analysis shows that despite clear increase in intent to incorporate spatial planning into governance and decision-making processes, there is a gap between programming intent and legislative actions, and between legislative instruments and budget allocations. Consequently, institutional coordination is constrained, and sectoral interventions take place, leading to fragmented and uneven urban development. This paper contributes to discussions on post-conflict urbanism, arguing that uneven temporal consolidation of planning across interconnected planning, legal and budget framework systems shape urban development in transitioning post-conflict contexts.

Spatial planning is a newborn practice in Timor-Leste; the first approved spatial plan was developed in 2015 for the island of Ataúro, although spatial planning public policy was only established i...

This final chapter synthesises the explorations within this book on the indeterminate nature of threshold spaces between land and water, revealing their spatial, ecological, and social complexity. Shaped by both natural processes and human interventions, these zones challenge conventional notions of fixed boundaries. Coastal and riverfront areas – often sites of cultural identity, historical memory, and contemporary transformation – are now under mounting pressure from climate change, urbanisation, and infrastructural expansion. Drawing on a range of case studies, the contributions advocate a shift in planning and design thinking: moving away from rigid delineations towards embracing fuzziness as an operative concept for interpreting, designing, and managing these liminal spaces. This book calls for interdisciplinary approaches that integrate scientific, cultural, and local knowledge to reimagine the adaptation of urban landscapes. Through a combination of theoretical reflections and practical examples, the chapters in this book develop an essential framework of Fuzziness, offering urban practitioners and researchers new conceptual and operational tools to foster resilience, enhance adaptability, and support sustainable transformation along water bodies.

Fuzzy Boundaries: Threshold between Water and Land aims to critically explore the need for and the limitations of fixed and rigid boundaries within the transitional space between water and land. This reflection occurs within the broader context of a world undergoing deep and continuous environmental, climatic, social, and political transformations. With increasing pressure from rising sea levels, territorial reconfigurations, and changes in socio-ecological dynamics, the conventional notion of a clear-cut line separating water from land proves increasingly inadequate. This curated collection gathers the reflections of 26 authors on the ever-evolving boundary between water and land, exploring threshold spaces that, due to their physical characteristics and the social, political, and cultural significance they carry, are often viewed as grey and undefined areas, both in planning and in the supporting legal framework. The selected reflections offer a partial yet stimulating perspective, reconsidering these spaces and attributing them to new design value.

Fuzzy Boundaries: Threshold Between Water and Land is a curated selection of reflections on the boundaries between water and land, and its meaning amidst climate change, social, economic, and political challenges. By engaging with form and contemplating the frictions and quiet conflicts that inhabit transitional spaces, the authors suggest that fuzziness – viewed through varied geographical and cultural lenses – holds the potential to reveal deeper layers of meaning. This book is structured as a journey ‘from reading to design’, guiding readers through stages that may be understood as moving from analysis and interpretation, to drawing, modelling, and designing, and ultimately to implementation and [un]building – offering deeper insight into the thresholds between land and water. Readers are invited to critically reflect on the representation of boundaries: What is depicted, how it is portrayed, and through which scales and perspectives. Fuzzy Boundaries brings together case studies from across the globe, revealing how distinct realities intersect and coexist, while exploring strategies to confront the challenges currently facing people, water, and land. The sequence of chapters forms a body of knowledge aimed at supporting future initiatives in conservation, adaptation, and transformation amid growing urban and environmental challenges. This book is directed at students, researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers in a call to consider fuzziness in project design thinking.

Housing is increasingly playing a key role in the global economy, acting as a catalyst for capital expansion, international investment, and wealth accumulation. The transformation of the Portuguese housing system, which has been influenced by financial actors, illustrates the expansion of finance into housing systems. This paper unpacks recent housing policy and reports on the dimensions of the changes and alterations in financial actors, markets, practices, measurements, and narratives dominant in Portugal. We find that while the liberalisation of the rental market has sparked interest from private sector investors in recent years, the anticipated improvements in housing provision and affordability have not been realised thus far. These findings shed new light on the key features of the financialisation of the Portuguese housing sector and the extent of the political power of financial actors in promoting the financialisation of housing.

Informal settlements are characterised by inadequate infrastructure and overcrowding. Making up a major portion of the urban fabric of Asia, they are the result of ineffective policies, unsuitable regulations and a lack of political will. Informal settlements are vulnerable to climate hazards, burdened with land tenure insecurity and dependence on the informal economy for livelihoods. As they expand, coastal informal settlements occupy environmentally vulnerable spaces, such as low-lying marshy swamps alongside water. The most frequent risk is flooding, which is made worse by sea-level rise and excessive precipitation brought on by climate change. In the absence of adequate institutional interventions and exacerbated by the impact of climate change, inhabitants are forced to develop local parsimonious coping strategies to forge a harmonious coexistence with water. The objective of the article is to find space for water, that is, identifying physical space that serves for flood adaptation within informal settlements. This involves spatial assessment of embedded shared space in informal settlements. Spatial analysis based on the occupation of space and its relation with water is carried out through drawings, direct observations and interpretation from the cases of Dharavi in Mumbai, India, and Dili in Timor-Leste. The findings reveal the intricate relation between water and informal settlements, laying the groundwork for a proposition of typologies for water-related public spaces that could be of significant use for formulating flood adaptation strategies.

The conflict-stricken city of Dili holds circa 20 percent of the national population of Timor-Leste. The city is wrought with inequality and caters poorly to the needs of its ever-increasing population, stretching the city beyond its physical limits and pushing recent arrivals into areas of environmental vulnerability. It is a city now characterised, by government and civil society, as a cidade de lata (“tin city”) in reference to poverty and poor living conditions felt across it. Governance structures change with political cycles, impacting on the continuity of plans and strategies, as well as on the operative capacity of institutions. This chapter is the result of an analysis of project plans, programmes, legislation and policies, and it reflects upon interviews carried out with different actors. Results demonstrate that there is a need for integrated planning and strategy development, noting that such circumstances require governance to reflect the flexibility and an understanding of the value of the level of intervention while recognising the need to work across multi-sectoral processes. It also reflects the need for coordination of interventions and enforcement of legislation, and a need to focus on the national and local needs through processes across the different scales of governance.