Governing the bairro clandestino of Cova da Moura (1974–2015): Decentred and collaborative governance in an informal neighbourhood in Lisbon’s metropolitan area

Cova da Moura was established in the municipality of Amadora in the mid-1970s as a bairro clandestino (‘informal’ or ‘illegal neighbourhood’). Since then, it has grown into a community of thousands of residents; having escaped the large rehousing operations of the 1990s, Cova da Moura is today one of the few surviving bairros clandestinos in the metropolitan area of Lisbon, as well as a ‘distressed urban area’. In the four decades of its life, Cova da Moura has passed through different eras of policymaking, and has been the object of a variety of public interventions. The article provides a critical assessment of the Iniciativa Bairros Críticos (Critical Neighbourhoods Initiative, 2005–2013), as an example of a policy initiative embodying a normative vision of collaborative governance. The case of the Iniciativa Bairros Críticos in Cova da Moura provides some lessons on how collaborative governance design can address key challenges that ‘distressed urban areas’ pose to public intervention – but at the same time shows us the unavoidable pitfalls of the process, as well as the limits of their reach vis-à-vis broad, structural issues.