Contemporary cities, historically shaped by models that prioritised fragmented urban expansion and automobile dependency, now face pressing challenges related to climate change, environmental degradation, and social inequality.
In this context, sustainable urbanism emerges as an alternative paradigm that seeks to promote diversity, active mobility, and quality of life, with certified eco-neighbourhoods established as urban laboratories that combine environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and urban regeneration. However, the literature has warned that such certifications may be reduced to marketing tools, risking greenwashing when they fail to deliver structural, long-term transformations.
Addressing this issue, this dissertation aimed to critically examine the extent to which certifications and certified eco-neighbourhoods actually implement the principles of sustainable urbanism. To this end, a comparative analysis methodology was developed, structured around ten categories (urban design and morphology; sustainable construction; social inclu-sion and diversity; governance; nature and natural resources; comfort, health and well-being; energy and climate; sustainable mobility; identity and culture; and economic development), applied through secondary data collected from official reports, institutional documents, and academic literature. This approach enabled the construction of an evaluation framework that highlighted both the strengths and weaknesses of certification systems and case studies.
The results show that certification systems are relevant tools for guiding planning practices but face limitations due to gaps in resource management, the lack of mandatory requirements for key comfort and human health elements, insufficient community participation, and limited long-term monitoring. It is concluded that certified eco-neighbourhoods represent an important contribution to the sustainable urban transition, but only when combined with consistent public policies, transparency mechanisms, and governance structures that truly value citizens as central actors in the transformation.

Supervision: João Pedro Gouveia