Abstract
About half the Portuguese population do not yet possess any sys tee of domiciliary water supply, sewerage or garbage removal, and hundreds of thousands people remain with no electric energy.
The excessive concentration of the political-economical organ, the Central Power acting with a very distinguished character of class, the inability to define or achieve a general policy of an urbanistic planning and management, and the technical and finance insufficiency of the regional and local structures, are certainly the main causes.
The objectives of this study are the connection between encouragement and the development of infrastructures (basic sanitation and electricity) of Lisbon's Metropolitan Area, either with urban growth, either with the production process and space appropriation, or still with the existent regional and local structures.
We have attended to the following hypothesis: 1. The evolution of infrastructures, translates and develops patterns of spatial and social segregation; 2. The development of infrastructures not always follow the urban growth‘s rhythm; 3. The privilege of localisation of each new infrastructures are capitalized by the owner of the land and/or property, becoming possible for it to cause changes in the local social structures; 4. The decentralized and democratic power, denotes more earnestness in satisfying individual and collective aspirations. 5. The development of infrastructures depends on political and financial autonomy, technical capacity, dimension and political direction of local structures; 6. The re-solution in shortage of infrastructures in Lisbon‘s Metropolitan Area, is in creating new associations and inter-municipal enterprises, and also in the support and reorganisation of some public enterprises.