According to GreenSavers, this is the main change in the document on which the population of the Aveiro district and other entities with interests in the municipality can express their opinion until 1 March, which is the last day of the deadline for suggesting changes.

"The National Ecological Reserve has increased considerably in Arouca, as required by law. It has gone from 42 percent of the territory to 67 percent," the mayor, Margarida Belém, told Lusa.

As for the other changes planned for Arouca's PDM, they mainly concern adjustments to the legislation in force, namely the new requirements for the delimitation of urban land, which now "cannot exceed the limits of areas that are totally or partially urbanised or built up".

Margarida Belém says that the final result "is not very different from the delimitation of urbanized land in the current PDM" and states that: "It was possible to redefine perimeters that were more in line with reality, in which the expansion of existing areas or the creation of new ones was subject to the verification of demanding requirements - such as the opportunity and economic viability [of the projects allocated to those plots] and the existence of urban infrastructures, such as water and sanitation networks."

"The rules for defining urban perimeters are different," argues the mayor. "And it's important to highlighted that there are new categories of rural land with building capacity, namely rural agglomerations," she adds.