Progetto e rinnovo urbano nella città contemporanea: il caso del Portogallo

Abstract

In the last few years, following the entry of Portugal in the European Community, the implementation and realization of plans have allowed the renewal of Portuguese cities to flourish. Numerous interventions, that took place in a short period of time, allow an evaluation of the effectiveness of the urban project applied to a cultural context and planning tradition which is comparable to the Italian one. The study is articulated as a “grassroots research”, starting with the analysis of numerous urban and architectural projects that investigate the relationship between legislative reform, financial instruments, elaboration of plans and architectural realization. Adopting a disciplinary stance, this article attempts to showcase the innovative contributions to the development of planning instruments that assume morphological relationship between the city as a founding value, since “desenhar a cidade é trabalhar com os materiais que moldam o território, como a morfologia do terreno sobre o qual se constrói, a estrutura natural que se conserva ou reinventa, os marcos da memória colectiva, a massa edificada e os espaços abertos, as infra-estruturas que suportam a mobilidade, os elementos que, pela sua funçao aglutinadora, constituem verdadeiras ancoras urbanas, estruturam a cidade e polarizam a vida das pessoas” (Manuel Salgado). This study principally undertakes two fields of research: the first is the broadening of the analysis of institutional, prescriptive and political context in which urban regeneration operations took place. The second analyses selected projects and the innovative use of planning instruments with relation to the context it addresses, the program that it responds to, the adopted method of intervention, and the urban renewal results achieved. The contribution constitutes the thesis work of Doctorate of Urban, Territorial and Environmental Design Research at the University of Florence, under the supervision of Prof. Gian Franco Di Pietro (University of Florence) and Prof. Álvaro Domingues (FAUP Porto).