Several themes and perspectives are reunited under this collection of texts about urban developments in the Portuguese-speaking worlds of Brazil and Portugal. As each analyst tends to have a particular view on what the concept should refer to, the meaning attributed to the word 'development' in this book is also diverse. This is one of the reasons why it is written in its plural form: 'developments'. The concept (or the word) is here used openly so that all efforts to define it are provisory, partial and elusive, considering the various national, regional, linguistic and scientific meanings pertaining to correlated facts and processes and according to the geo-historical context in which the term is used. In the title, the idea of ‘urban developments' is also used to indicate evolution or novelty. The book is dedicated to discussing state-of-the-art urban research in Brazil and Portugal.