Regenerative Rural Living
Plan how you will live on the land and care for it.
For people who want to live on and care for rural land in Portugal. Start with what the place needs, what you know and what you still need to find out.
RRL brings land, housing, water, energy, money and knowledge into one project. You invite the people you need, and later compare what changes on the land with where you started.
Use RRL for free.1 project of your own · Plus up to 1 other project by invitationCosts & contributions
What that looks like in Vale Vivo
A made-up project. What is filled in, what is still open, and what can happen now.
What is already filled in
- Your place · 5.24 haMeasured
- Who will live there · 5 residentsDeclared
- Living here from September 2027
What RRL shows
Stages 1 and 2 done. Now stage 3 of 9: The land as it is now.
Who will map the habitats on your land?
Not known yet
What can happen now
You plan to ask an ecologist · December 2026
A plan, not a confirmed appointment.
Our starting point
The land should be measurably better because people live there.
Living on the land uses space, water and energy. RRL helps you make the care of soil, water and nature part of the same plan.
How it works
From understanding a place to caring for it
The project follows nine stages in three parts.
Explore and plan
Stages 1 to 4: understand the place, who will live there and the land’s current condition. Develop the house, water, energy and land-care plans together.
- LandDraw your land and zones. Consult available planning and environmental maps, with their sources and limits.
- Starting situationRecord how the land is today: vegetation, soil, photo points.
- LivingWho will live there, and a house you design yourself, with materials and a cutting plan.
- PermitExplore procedure questions and the documents to discuss with your architect or authority.
- Water, wastewater and energyConnect or supply yourself, your wastewater included, with a water year and a solar year month by month.
- Plan and commitmentsWhat you will do per zone for soil, water and nature, and what you commit to for it.
- Working togetherYour architect, your adviser or someone from the câmara looks along, with a role that suits them.
Budget and substantiate
Stages 5 to 7: work out costs and funding, gather missing evidence and prepare your proposal. You hand it over yourself.
Carry out and learn
Stages 8 and 9: record the authority’s answer, follow agreed work, costs and observations, and learn what needs adjusting.
RRL EDU: learning about your land
A first course on productive and edible forests, with a small trial to prepare on your own place. It is a public draft; its sources and review status are shown.
Explore RRL EDUEvery value says
- Declared
- Measured
- Estimated
- Derived
- Not known yet
Everywhere
- The road: what is up to you now and what lies with others
- Simple or with sources
- Six languages
- On your phone, out on the land too
What you know about a place, in one project
Information is scattered across maps, documents, conversations and budgets. Bring it together so your next decision builds on what you already know.
| Today | With RRL | |
|---|---|---|
| The place | A listing, a map and a conversation can tell different stories. | Keep statements beside their sources and the questions you still need to resolve. |
| Your plan and budget | Housing, water, energy, land care and money are often considered separately. | Work out how your choices fit together, what they cost and what still needs funding. |
| Knowledge and advice | It can be hard to know what to look for or whom to ask. | Use explanations and learning material, record your observations and ask a qualified person where needed. |
| Working with others | You explain the same plan again and lose track of who said what. | Bring plans, sources, assessments and open questions into a dossier you can share with the right people. |
| What changes | A completed action does not tell you whether it helped the land. | Compare later observations with the baseline and your targets, including disappointing results. |
Together with experts and the câmara
Work from the same information
Bring your architect, adviser or an invited public authority into the project with appropriate access. Sources, professional assessments and open questions remain traceable to the people and information behind them.
Explore collaboration, learning and pilotsWhen a proposal is handed over, its exact text and the version used are kept. The project trail can also be checked without RRL.
How the evidence is kept
The text of a handover receives a SHA-256 fingerprint. The project trail has a public daily anchor that can be checked without RRL.
A land-area check
Inputs still needed
The applicable rule and version are named beside the check.
The calculation appears once the required measurements are recorded.
- Land area · source and read date kept
- House footprint · derived from the chosen house design
Supporting documents are linked to the values they support.
What RRL does not do
It approves nothing
- RRL sends nothing to the câmara. The household hands the proposal over itself.
- RRL does not replace official maps. PDM, REN, RAN and Natura 2000 are a first check; the authority determines which official version applies.
- RRL does not fill in what nobody knows. Not known stays not known.
- The public bodies behind source data do not endorse RRL or a project in it.
Who is behind it
Made in Castro Marim
Built by SYFERS for Cooperativa Integral Sulitânia, CRL. The rules are RRL’s reading of Portuguese law, each beside its source: not an official legal standard and not yet verified by an expert.
- Cost
- Free, also after the beta: 1 project of your own and up to 1 other by invitation. AI is a paid extra you agree on in advance.
- Your record
- Yours to download whole. You can ask for it to be erased; the privacy notice says what stays, such as the audit log.
- Location
- Never shown publicly. The project’s members, a câmara you invite and the platform administrators see it; another observer only if you allow it.
Free guide · In Dutch
Living in rural Portugal
From a wish to live in the countryside to a substantiated plan for people and land. Explore the process, Portuguese procedures and local collaboration, with diagrams and practical tools you can use with or without RRL.
38 pages · fillable questionnaire · Dutch · October 2026
Read the whitepaper in DutchDownload with questionnaire (PDF, Dutch)
Free to use
Start with a project of your own
Register with your name and email address. Free use includes one project of your own and working on one other project by invitation.
Register for freeQuestions
Something not here? Write to us in Portuguese or English.
Is RRL a permit or a certificate?
No. RRL checks your plans against its own reading of the rules, which is not an official legal standard, and says for each check: no problems found, problems found, not yet checkable, for the authority, or not applicable. The câmara and the other authorities decide. Every answer keeps its evidence and source.
Who can see my project?
The people invited into it, and the platform administrators who run RRL. The exact location of your land is never shown publicly; a câmara you invite as an observer sees it, another observer only if you allow it. Others see what the project shares: a link to a building guide, a proposal you hand over, or what is sent to a Lab of the federation it is linked to. The service providers that run RRL also handle the data; the privacy notice names each one. You can download what RRL keeps about you and ask for it to be erased. Some records stay, such as the audit log and a proposal already handed over.
My land is not in Portugal. Can I still use RRL?
The first rules are written for Portugal, and are marked as not an official legal standard. You can still describe land elsewhere and plan on it, but RRL cannot check it against local rules yet.
Do I need to know the numbers already?
No. “Not known yet, because…” is a real answer. RRL shows who can fill each gap (you, an engineer or the câmara), so you know whom to ask for what.
Can I work with my own architect or house builder?
Yes, and you still need them: RRL does not replace the architect or the engineer. Invite your architect into the project. You design the house in RRL’s house design tool, in 3D, and your architect can download it as an IFC model for their own drawing program. A house you already have can be described from its papers.