CIDADES, Comunidades e Territórios

Territoriality and Health Policy: Contributions to Research and Action

The significance of territory in health policy has been approached from different disciplinary fields without developing a conceptual body of work to register the complexity of the problems that exist at that critical juncture. This paper proposes to investigate the contribution that can be provided by a territorial approach to research and the practice of managers in primary health care, to throw light on the mutually conditioning relationship that exists in the two domains. This is a concept-based study that establishes links between the contributions from research on primary health care, the concepts provided by geography, and policy analysis. This approximation reveals two standpoints from which policies can be analysed: on the one hand the concept of care as a stage in a correlation involving differing notions of territory, and on the other, recognition of the fact that at the moment of implementation in the territory a process of institutional recreation at local level occurs where differing regulatory logic is put into play and negotiated.

Evolução dos centros comerciais na Área Metropolitana de Lisboa: O início do fim de um ciclo

Num contexto em que emergem novos formatos comerciais e que os consumidores mudam as suas preferências, é necessário refletirmos sobre os centros comerciais existentes. Neste sentido, torna-se necessário compreender o seu percurso de vida e, acima de tudo, identificar o seu posicionamento atual perante o aparecimento de novos formatos. Deste modo, o objetivo deste estudo é perceber a evolução dos centros comerciais na Área Metropolitana de Lisboa (AML) ao longo das últimas décadas, de forma a perceber se existem centros comerciais em declínio e em ascensão. Em termos metodológicos, realizou-se um levantamento extensivo dos centros comerciais existentes na área de estudo, tendo como principal suporte a base de dados do Observatório do Comércio (2000). Através de fontes bibliográficas diversas, identificaram-se as aberturas nos últimos 15 anos, completando a base referida. De seguida, foram visitados 150 centros comerciais (do total de 157) na Grande Lisboa, de forma a perceber se existem centros comerciais mortos ou moribundos. Os resultados deste estudo mostram-nos que há formatos que permanecem e consolidam a sua posição no mercado enquanto outros que entram em declínio, verificando-se já um número assinalável de centros comerciais mortos. Os centros comerciais em declínio são fruto de uma conceção pouco cuidada, sendo quase sempre condomínios comerciais do final da década de 90, sem gestão unitária, que não correspondem às preferências atuais dos consumidores. Pelo contrário, os centros de sucesso foram adequadamente concebidos e dimensionados e dispõem de gestão profissional e know-how necessário para saber responder às adversidades.

In a context of emergence of new formats and new consumer preferences, it is necessary to rethink current shopping malls. Therefore, there is a need to increase empirical knowledge on this phenomenon. With that in mind, the objective of this study is to understand the evolution of these premises in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area in the last decades, in order to understand their position in the retail life cycle. Regarding the methodology, I conducted an extensive survey on shopping malls in the study area. In the first phase, I updated the Observatório do Comércio database, through bibliographic research, with the shopping mall openings in the last fifteen years. In the second phase, a field survey was conducted on 150 shopping malls (from a total of 157) in order to assess their current status. The results of this study show that some shopping malls types endure and consolidate their market position, while others enter a decline phase, and the number of dead shopping malls is already significant. The latter are the result of a poor conception. They are generally commercial condominiums of the late 1990’s, with no integrated management, and do not match current consumer preferences. Successful shopping mall types, on the other hand, generally have an adequate conception and size, as well as the necessary know-how to face adversity. In the last two decades, therefore, we observe two distinct patterns in the evolution of shopping malls.

Discursos hegemónicos sobre a cidade: desenvolvimento” e “crescimento verde” em Braga

O objectivo deste artigo é desconstruir discursivamente a cidade de Braga. Através da análise de comunicação política e de publicidade, procura-se ilustrar o potencial analítico de conceitos formulados por Ernesto Laclau e Chantal Mouffe para compreender a forma como determinados discursos se tornam hegemónicos, moldando o sentido da cidade e a identidade dos sujeitos. Laclau e Mouffe vêem os significados como algo que nunca está completamente definido mas apenas parcialmente fixado por pontos nodais constituídos através de práticas de articulação. “Desenvolvimento” e “crescimento verde” foram dois pontos nodais importantes que fixaram o significado das relações sociais em Braga em diferentes momentos históricos. A “natureza” e o “ambiente” emergiram numa variedade de contextos discursivos para apoiar o projecto da Câmara Municipal e os interesses empresariais na cidade. À medida que estes significantes se foram desgastando, transformaram-se em significantes vazios, permitindo todos os tipos de usos discursivos na construção e fortalecimento da posição hegemónica dos poderes locais. Ao mesmo tempo, as posições e a identidade dos cidadãos foram, também, sendo reconstruídas por esses discursos.

The goal for this article is to discursively deconstruct the city of Braga. By analyzing political communication and advertising, it aims to show the analytical potential of concepts proposed by Ernesto Laclau and Chatal Mouffe to understand how certain discourses become hegemonic, shaping the meaning of the city and the identity of subjects. Laclau and Mouffe view meanings as something that his never completely defined but only partly fixed by nodal points constituted through practices of articulation. Development” and “green growth” were two key nodal points that fixed the meaning of social relations in Braga in different historic moments. “Nature” and “green” emerged in a variety of discursive contexts to support both the city council's project and business interests. As these signifiers became increasingly eroded, they turned into empty signifiers allowing for all sorts of discursive uses in constructing and reinforcing the hegemonic position of local powers. Simultaneously, the subject positions and identities of citizens were also reconstructed through those discourses.

Dams and socio-urban transformation: A comparative analysis of the hydroelectric projects of Salto Grande and Yacyretá

La construcción de grandes proyectos hidroeléctricos producen una serie de consecuencias de diversa índole (demográficas, ecológicas, sociales, culturales) siendo una de ellas la relocalización de población urbana. En este trabajo nos centramos en los procesos de relocalizaciones, generados por la construcción de las represas hidroeléctricas de Salto Grande (Argentina-Uruguay) y Yacyretá (Paraguay-Argentina). Analizando específicamente el cambio generado en las ciudades de Nueva Federación y Posadas (Argentina) y Encarnación (Paraguay). La presa de Salto Grande generó un lago de 30.000 hectáreas siendo casi el 70% de la vieja ciudad de Federación inundada y trasladada a la ciudad de Nueva Federación construida a 5 km del emplazamiento original. En el caso de las ciudades de Posadas-Encarnación el abordaje trata de redimensionar el estudio de las relocalizaciones, analizando como la población desplazada experimenta los efectos singulares del desplazamiento al ser acompañados de aquellos procesos de segregación socio-espacial. Sostenemos que no se pueden entender los procesos que se manifiestan en los conjuntos de población relocalizada desde una aproximación insular, sino que es necesario circunscribirlo al contexto más general de la transformación socio-urbana generada por las obras complementarias de estos proyectos.

The construction of great hydroelectric projects, generates a series of consequences of various nature (demographic, ecological, social, cultural) and one of them, is the relocation of urban population. In this paper we focus on the processes of relocations generated by the construction of the hydroelectric dams of Salto Grande (Argentina-Uruguay) and Yacyretá (Paraguay-Argentina),. and examineAnalyzing specifically the change generated on the cities of Nueva Federación and Posadas (Argentina) and Encarnación (Paraguay). Salto Grande dam created a lake of 30,000 hectares being corresponding to almost 70% of the old Federación city flooded and moved to the city of Nueva Federación, built to up at a distance of 5 km from the original site. In the case of the cities of Posadas-Encarnación, the approach trywe look, from another perspective, the study ofat the relocations, analyzing how the displaced population suffersundergoes the effects of displacement to be accompanied by following the processes of socio-spatial segregation. We argue that can not understand the processes that occur in sets of population relocated cannot be understood from an insular approach, so it is necessary to circumscribe place the case inside the broader context of the social and urban transformation generated by the additional complementary works of these projects.

Negotiating the middle-class city: Housing and equipping post-war Turin, 1950-1980

The article explores the pattern of fragmented public spaces and collective facilities built in Turin between the 1950s and the 1970s, as the result of negotiation processes conducted between public institutions, private developers and professionals over the design and construction of housing devoted to the middle-class. Considering three developments - the complexes of Moncalieri and Collegno located at the outskirts of the city, and the new residential district of Quartiere Ippodromo in the southern sector - the article observes public facilities as the outcome of a set of different policies, mirroring the encounter between an heterogeneous set of actors and initiatives: from the scale of the playground close to the condominio to the public park at the edge of the new residential sectors, from the neighborhood's kindergartens and primary schools, to the community and sports centers in the new districts. During this period, houses devoted to middle-class and new public facilities were negotiated, designed and built simultaneously, bringing light to the fragmented process of construction that generated post-war Turin, implemented through series of punctual agreements between private and public actors. Through an uncommon approach, that aims at combining traditional sources with the analysis of less explored planning tools (mainly the convenzioni urbanistiche and the piani di lottizzazione), the article contributes to a deeper understanding of the development of post-war Italian cities, by looking at the aggregation of houses and facilities as two dimensions of inhabiting/living - closely interrelated in middle class housing - that together contribute to actively build the "ordinary" city. Nowadays this interrelationship still represents a focal point of social cohesion, urban quality and liveability.

Real Estate Pioneers on the Metropolitan Frontier: The works of Jean-Florian Collin and François Amelinckx in Antwerp

In the Belgian context, the production of Public Mass housing remained limited in scope. Apart from a few well published examples Cité Modèle & Kiel (Braem), Luchtbal (Van Kuyck), Cité de Droixhe (Groupe EGAU), Belgian housing policies focused on the promotion of private homeownership. Mass housing in Belgium took the form of the massive production of private houses, constituting a sprawled urban landscape that has been described as the 'banlieue radieuse'. Less studied is the short lived but quantitatively significant private production of large scale high-rise apartments. This paper studies the close relationship between the production of these very different forms of 'mass housing': low- and high rise, inner-city and suburban. While the public policy context is rather well known, the private developers that produced this landscape have hardly been studied. This paper studies major players (Amelinckx n.v., Etrimo n.v., Extensa n.v.) and the architectural and development models through which they managed to create and capture a vast market of commodified housing. Through the detailed reconstruction of large scale commercial development schemes in Antwerp and Brussels, the paper describes the optimism of these mavericks of the Belgian property boom and recollects the radiant suburban promise they delivered. Although these property tycoons seem to have had little difficulty in luring in the middle classes and in persuading local political boards, today it becomes clear that the premises on the basis of which they sold the suburban dream were imbued with a thin instantaneous optimism that turned out to be too precarious to keep up with the subsequent impact of urbanization. While their activities are mostly remembered for the trauma of their bankruptcy, affecting many small contractors and private investors, this paper will highlight the collective failure to embed these large scale endeavours within enduring and intelligent (public) urban development strategies.

Modernist High-Rises in Postwar Antwerp: Two Answers to the same Question

As recent international scholarship has shown, the Modern Movement was not as coherent as authors such as Sigfried Giedion or Nikolaus Pevsner have claimed. Post-war modernism in particular has many faces. Although architects produced similar housing typologies that are presented in collective works of social housing within the same category, the architects could still take different positions. By means of a comparative analysis of two radical modernist high-rise housing projects in Antwerp, this article demonstrates how the focus of the design of similar projects could still differ considerably. Designed by Renaat Braem, the Kiel housing estate (1953) in the south of Antwerp will be compared with Hugo Van Kuyck's Luchtbal housing estate (1954-1962) in the city's north. Although both complexes are social housing blocks raised on pilotis, they differ in size, concept, architectural quality and degree of detailing, but also in ideology and utopian content. Both architects shared a fascination for Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse and for the Athens Charter (1933), and held a belief in progress and the need for a new idiom. At the same time, however, they have different ways of dealing with modernity. I will employ the analytical framework developed by architectural historian Sarah Williams Goldhagen (2000) to shed light on the architects' different positions on the social and political axes.

Antes do recomeço: a cidade nas revistas Arquitectura e Binário

Como se processava o debate disciplinar sobre a cidade, que informava a grande expansão urbana em Portugal, antes e depois da revolução de Abril de 1974? De que modo se discutiam a arquitectura e o espaço urbano, quando a falta de habitação era um problema premente, e na Europa se questionava já a cidade produzida no pós guerra? As questões expostas estabelecem o quadro de desenvolvimento de uma pesquisa realizada a partir das duas publicações especializadas de grande divulgação no país na época abordada, as revistas Arquitectura e Binário, incidindo sobre o modo como se processavam o debate, a teorização e a exposição de ideias, que neste texto é sinteticamente apresentada. A temática abordada é entendida como relevante pela sua relação com a prática da transformação da cidade portuguesa, mais do que pela definição de um corpo coerente ou estruturado de ideias, pela organização de diferentes linhas de pensamento ou pela inovação das abordagens. Importa por isso entender o que e como se debatia ou se apresentavam ideias, isto é, como se definia o contexto no qual se desenvolvia o projecto, se desenhava o espaço urbano e o edifício. O momento novo do pós-revolução, em particular, em que toda a organização da sociedade era questionada e todas as possibilidades pareciam em aberto, inteiras e limpas, constituía um recomeço também para os arquitectos, empenhados em criar o suporte físico para a nova época e a nova sociedade. As reflexões, ideias, modelos ou teorias de que se socorriam para fundamentar o desenho, ante a urgência do momento e a premência de resposta ditadas pelo espírito do tempo, tinham já que estar formadas, sendo, em parte, fruto do contexto de discussão disciplinar aqui abordado.

1976 was called the second year of a new Portugal by L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, that published a thematic dossier about its architecture of the period. Showing the country's visibility from the April 25th 1974's revolution - which contrasted with pop culture's statement that the revolution would not be televised - it focused on the relation between architecture and the social transformation under way. Such attention would be crucial in the internationalization of Portuguese architecture, later well expressed by Álvaro Siza's significant role. After a period of enthusiasm, when all possibilities seemed open - whole and clean, in poet Sophia de Mello Breyner's words - the 'Portugal an II' dossier had an approach somewhat eclectic, which sought to synthesize the experience of the dictatorship period and then presented individual experiences of architects that designed basing on their own experiences and influences. Most of these authors had already their work published by Portuguese periodicals, and some of them were part of the group that had taken the lead of the debate in the Arquitectura journal, that symptomatically waned it's activity in the period after the revolution - it was no longer time to reflect and to debate, but to engage and to work. But what about before this zero year? How was it discussed architecture, urban space, the city, when the housing shortage was acute, and in Europe was questioning the city produced in the post-war period? This paper presents an analysis of that debate, reviewing disciplinary periodicals and relating it with the international perspective.

Recording the optimistic: An audiovisual approach to the city of Lisbon by its architecture school in the 1980s

With the revolution of 25 April 1974, Portugal initiated a unique cultural journey that paralleled, in the architectural field, the questioning of the modern movement that occurred since the aftermath of World War II. The academic context was a particular mirror for this criticism. The director of the Lisbon architecture course pronounced its engagement in "a sort of counter-culture"; the cultural critique that occurred, however, was more of a fortunate accident. In fact, an optimistic post-traumatic euphoria was a common element in some of the most radical pedagogical expressions that took place. In the face of the 'creative' productions that unfolded under the Lisbon architecture school in the 1980s, we acknowledge an unconventional form of expression that leads us to question whether a particular identity frame has characterised Portuguese architectural culture and its interrelation with the city of Lisbon ever since. This paper provides evidence for such a claim by examining previously untapped primary sources - testimonies and documents - that relate directly to Lisbon's architecture course between 1976 and 1986 and which have informed background research for a PhD. Three videos from the School's archives were analysed to demonstrate how students related to the topic of urbanity, specifically that of Lisbon, via this particular form of art.

Casas em série, construções temporárias e lotes vazios: Os subúrbios através da arte contemporânea

Na arte do século XX é claramente identificável uma ampla transposição das tradicionais fronteiras definidas entre diferentes categorias artísticas e, em particular, o desenvolvimento de transferências entre arte e arquitectura. Com efeito, o processo transgressivo que ao longo das décadas iniciais do século XX determinou as primeiras vanguardas foi recuperado e consolidado a partir do segundo pós-guerra através das dinâmicas criadas pelas neo-vanguardas - nas quais podemos reconhecer uma deliberada convergência entre os campos convencionalmente estabelecidos pela arquitectura e pela produção artística. A partir dos anos 1950, assistiu-se à afirmação de uma zona de contacto entre estas duas áreas: um território nebuloso, definido não apenas por uma mútua influência, mas também pela partilha de um léxico tectónico. Num contexto determinado por deslizamentos entre diferentes media, e em articulação com as revisões do modernismo que começavam a emergir, foi então que a prática artística, de certo modo funcionando como uma heterotopia, se constituiu como um espaço de crítica, capaz de analisar, confrontar e problematizar tanto a arquitectura como as diversas formas de desenvolvimento urbano. Ao revisitar e discutir os seus modos de operar e questionar as suas soluções, até certo ponto, a arte expandiu o debate sobre a produção arquitectónica e o planeamento das cidades. Recuperando algumas das referências teóricas centrais que definem este processo, e partindo do trabalho de vários artistas - na sua maioria norte-americanos, tendo em conta a particular expressão que este tipo de propostas teve nesse contexto -, este artigo procura discutir os múltiplos modos através dos quais a arte contemporânea problematizou a expansão urbana e a periferia.

In twentieth-century art, it´s clearly identifiable a general overcoming of the traditional boundaries between different media, and the development of obvious interchanges between art and architecture in particular. In fact, the transgressive process initiated in the scope of the first avant-gardes, was recaptured and consolidated during the second half of the century by the dynamics created by the neo avant-gardes - in which we can recognize a deliberate convergence between the fields conventionally established by artistic and architectural production. From the 1950s on, a contact zone between these two areas has been defined: a blurred territory determined not only by a mutual influence, but also by the sharing of a tectonic lexicon. In a scenario determined by slips between media, and in articulation with the revisions of modernism that began to emerge, it was then that artistic practice, somehow functioning as an heterotopia, became a critical space where architecture was analyzed, confronted and challenged. Moreover, revisiting and discussing its practices, and questioning its solutions, to a certain extent, art expanded the debate on architecture. Recapturing some of the main theoretical references that define this process, and drawing from the work of several artists, this paper aims to discuss some of the multiple ways contemporary art has been addressing urban growth and suburbia.

Recensão do livro "A Cidade Social - Impasse. Desenvolvimento. Fragmento"

Recensão do livro "Cities and the Cultural Economy"