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Copyright of A Obra Nasce is the property of Edicoes Universidade Fernando Pessoa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Much of the literature dealing with creativity and innovation as triggers for development seems to neglect other dimensions of urban development beyond the market economy. This is particularly challenging in places that face severe qualification problems such as Oporto City-Region, where an important share of the population do not belong to the so-called 'creative class' and have limited prospects of benefiting from urban development based on creativity and innovation. Nonetheless, alternative approaches to creativity and innovation have been developed in the last decade. Social innovation is one of these approaches. Nevertheless, it too faces acute problems related to the dissemination of new ideas beyond their field of origin. By analysing two socially innovative programmes in the education sector that are underway in the Oporto City-Region, this article aims to explore the prospects for disseminating social innovation through urban policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the tensions between state and spatial policy rescaling processes. It argues that the different timescales of their dynamics may produce significant barriers to the transformative goals of spatial policy. Supported by evidence of the gradualist nature of state restructuring in Portugal and the rescaling of a new spatial policy instrument, the paper illustrates and discusses the transformative difficulties in issues such as territorial integration, strategic negotiation at local level, inter-municipal cooperation and new forms of multi-level, multi-sectoral and state-society networking. Cross-national comparison with other Southern European countries allows conclusions to be drawn with regard to a dynamic approach to context-dependent phenomena and to the relevance of a timescale approach to state and spatial policy rescaling processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]