A sense of place: positioning identity in northern Portugal

Square in Barcelos, Portugal **© Brain**

If you can't beat them, work together.

Age-old rivalry often makes for the best stories. But in modern times, instead of driving apart, distinct characteristics providing fodder for timeless feuds between cities can be parlayed into collective assets. In northwest Portugal, four cities with four different urban contexts have come together to create Quadrilátero Urbano, a policy tool to combine the strengths of its members: Barcelos, Braga, Vila Nova de Famalicão and Guimarães. Separated by an average of 20 kilometers, the four cities all have their distinct identity. Rather than vying for prominence as the historical context might encourage, each city is improving their public policy by leaning into specific attributes in a uniquely modern way.

Guimarães holds the lofty title as the “Birthplace of Portugal”. A plaque on the ancient city fortifications proclaims the phrase “Aqui nasceu Portugal” (Portugal was born here). A short drive away lies the city of Vila Nova de Famalicão, the New City of Famalicao. One city boasts history while another conjures youth in its name. Braga is known as the city of churches but in the 21th Century, the city is an ardent believer in culture, of its youth and the diversity of recently arrived inhabitants. Rising above the Cávado River rich in a clay perfectly suited to crafting spellbinding ceramics, notably the emblematic Portuguese rooster figurine, Barcelos is a capital for artisans and handicrafts.

City branding: more than a slogan

Helsinki city hall — Helsinki branding adorns the city hall building

With such proximity, identity and local traditions are the key to economic and social vitality for all four cities, instilling a sense of pride in the overall region. City branding is a relatively new phenomenon but has always existed in the cultural consciousness. New York is the city that never sleeps. Paris is the city of lights. In an era of intense globalisation and big-city fatigue, smaller cities are looking to stake their claim as an alternative to aggressively dense megalopolises. Place branding plays a key role in forging a new identity for lesser-known urban areas, allowing smaller cities to compete with global capitals.

Much more than a logo or slogan, a successful city brand is backed by good policy and defines the essence of a place, proclaiming what exactly that city has to offer. All too often, a place brand fails to dive deep, opting for a catch phrase and a cryptic visual meant to distill centuries of history and context in a few hundred pixels. Seen through the Cities@Heart lens, city centres serve as a showroom for cities on the rise and the identity they choose for their future. A famous example of revolutionary city branding is the “Bilbao Effect”. Once a hub of industry, the city invited the Guggenheim museum to set up a satellite museum in its declining downtown area, an architectural landmark successfully repositioning the Basque city as a cultural capital on the world stage at the dawn of the new millennium. With a finite number of international museum outposts, it’s not every city that can rely on the media power of “starchitects”. Whether a city embraces its history or decides to take on a rebranding project, authenticity remains at the core of any successful place promotion initiative.

Barcelos : Artisans yesterday, engineers tomorrow

Within the Quadrilátero Urbano network, Barcelos has poised itself as the city of artisans and handicrafts. Their strategy takes a holistic approach to maintaining an identity as an artisan capital. For years, the city has been known for its thriving market where farmers and craftsmen alike can sell their wares in the city centre. Now a part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, the city is working to preserve traditional skills but decision makers understand the need to value craftsmanship in a tangible way.

Spaces like the house of Rosa Ramalho and the Museum of Pottery elevate folk tradition while their artisan centre provides training for the next generation of makers. The city’s Polytechnic Institute, IPCA, attracts a youthful population and proposes cutting-edge programs in design and textiles. Understanding that young people need to carry on traditions and reinvent them, the city proposed the creation of this design programme where students learn how to combine technological and artistic know-how. Barcelos city councilor Elisa Braga invokes the notion of “placekeeping” for the city, maintaining the roots of heritage all while making those traditions relevant.

A urban and social lab blossoms in Guimarães

Guimaraes — A city centre with UNESCO Heritage status **© Brain**

Guimarães likely has the most difficult existential challenge out of the four cities in Quadrilátero Urbano. A city identified with the birth of the nation and with a city centre on the UNESCO World Heritage register, Guimarães could have easily decided to build its future on past glory. Achieving UNESCO status inspired Guimarães to focus on reinvention. Rather than telling stories about buildings and people in history books, Guimarães is telling a new story built around social innovation and the city’s artisan and historical heritage.

As explained by Guimarães City Councilor Paulo Lopes Silva, the Bairro C programme “Paths of Culture and Creativity” offers a new pathway for articulating the city’s identity, acting as an urban laboratory to create new relationships between the city, artists and the community. The neighborhood aims to be carbon neutral and the four “C”’s of the programme are: Culture (Cultural Programming), Conhecimento (Knowledge: Conferences and Publications), Creativity (Public Art and Urban Art) and Community (Cultural Mediation and Community Projects). For the city of Guimaraes, the city centre is the perfect testing ground for innovative approaches. The unique urban and social context in the historic centre allows for citizen-led experimentation before deploying new strategies like energy communities or more sustainable waste management programmes at a city level.

In Famalicão, it pays to B-SMART

TNM Famalicao — Vítor Moreira presents the inner workings of the B-Smart platform **© Brain**

The full name of the city of Famalicão is “The New City of Famalicão”. Inspired by similar “new town” schemes in the United Kingdom and France, this planned city sprung up in the later half of the 20th Century and features a thoroughly modern city centre devoid of the characteristic Portuguese azulejos tiles so common in the region. In Quadrilátero Urbano, it’s an undeniable fact that when compared to its three other partner cities, in the case of Famalicão, history does not provide much source material. Fortunately, this dearth of heritage does not pose a problem for a place forming its identity around tech and a smart city strategy. For Francisco Jorge, Famalicão Head of Funding, “Identity is not what we are or were, it’s [also aspirational] where you want to go.” Famalicão is an industrial city, not a UNESCO heritage city and that is unabashedly their identity, an identity that values green policy, technology, connection and civic participation.

The B-Smart Famalicão initiative exemplifies the philosophy of the city and integrates the categories of Mobility, Governance, Quality of Life, Economy and Human Experience to generate a practical and transparent smart city model made-to-order for their specific needs. As explained by Vítor Moreira and Edgar Azevedo, the city offers three ways to integrate data: reports submitted by citizens, publicly managed software generated by an API (Application Programming Data) and images from monitoring devices. The Famalicão B-SMART team is then able to compare local data to national data, identify potentially dangerous situations and provide information about public spending. For example, in the health portal, the data shows that 37% of people admitted to the local hospital received a low-risk green bracelet. Such cases could be better directed to a pharmacy or para health professional and save valuable resources for the city. Their program updates automatically to show city spending in real time, offering transparency and useful information for citizens or potential investors. After an initial startup period, the platform is ready to go and provides a one-stop shop to gather information about the city and participate in its improvement.

Braga, a new religion of cultural policy

All mid-size and smaller cities with under 200,000 people, the four members of Quadrilátero Urbano are developing in relative proximity (under 1 hour by car) to Porto, which has been booming with influx of tourism and foreign businesses. The rather tired old Portuguese saying, “Porto, trabalha – Braga, reza” or “Porto works, Braga prays”, labels Braga as a city of churches and religious fervor. In an effort to counterbalance and modernise this rather pious image, the city has invested its efforts in becoming a vibrant Portuguese capital of culture, youth and nightlife.

Announced at the 2024 UNESCO Annual Conference of the Creative Cities network in Braga, the Braga Manifesto proclaims the city’s commitment to becoming a leading Global and European Creative City, placing culture at the core of its sustainable development strategy. With an ambitious albeit unsuccessful bid to become European Capital of Culture in 2027, in 2025, Braga will take on the role of Portuguese Capital of Culture. During the third Cities@Heart transnational meeting, Joana Fernandes, Braga 25 Teatro Circo Executive Administrator explained Braga’s that cultural strategy isn’t just about history, it’s also about storytelling: highlighting youth initiatives, digital technology and the cultural contributions of inhabitants, namely, of the multicultural lusophone communities who have recently made the city their home.

Difference as the key to resilience

Cities@Heart network delegates at the Gnration Youth Centre in Braga

Behind the thick 12th Century walls common in Guimarães it is easy to lose all contact with the outside world as cell phone reception becomes spotty. In Famalicão a robust homemade smart city model provides real-time tracking of services and potential public health risks such as the presence of invasive Asian hornet nests. Amid these contrasts, it’s clear, each city has something different to offer. All the cities in Quadrilátero Urbano have a strong identity. Their challenge is to work together to create an attractive pole north of Porto capable of competing with bigger cities.

According to Joana Fernandes, “small and medium cities are the backbone of Europe.” For Fernandes, “Identity is not something encapsulated in time, it’s always evolving and forever changing.” On the second day of the Cities@Heart Transnational meeting in Braga, Cities@Heart organised a round table with the four cities asking the questions: How to keep the balance and develop a healthy sense of identity in city centres? By working together on their own distinct strategies, the cities of Quadrilátero Urbano can prevent brain-drain and attract sustainable investment, making northwest Portugal a competitive hub for innovation, heritage preservation and culture.

In June 2024, the URBACT Cities@Heart network organised their third transnational meeting in the four cities of Quadrilátero Urbano, Portugal. The meeting aimed to focus on the issues of identity and new models of supply.

Submitted by on 18/03/2025

Suzanne Pergal

Suzanne Pergal currently manages communications and public engagement for the URBACT network Cities@Heart and works towards the internationalization of the proximity economy sector at the Greater Paris Metropolis, a public authority representing the 7.4 million inhabitants and 130 cities of the greater Paris area.

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