Presentation

In the global context of obsolete urban port renewal, it has been a tacit presumption, since the early pioneer North American operations, that the suddenly available large areas of privileged contact with the water were to constitute a benefit for an entire city's population. This laudable intention has the side effect, in certain planning approaches, of generally excluding the simple local integration which would specifically favor the neighboring populations, instead resulting in entirely new urban areas, autonomous in fruition and accessibilities.

Of course the two urban scales, the city and the neighborhood, are not incompatible. The urban interaction between waterfront public spaces and the surrounding districts could be accomplished through ordinary urban design strategies, reconciling urban fabrics and morphological elements of the two confining urban spaces. One can, for instance, understand the relation between the city of Lisbon and its river throughout the centuries by analyzing the city's urban structure. Its riverside area renewal could undergo the anchoring to historical urban systems and / or bring emphasis to specific site characteristics. Quite consensual, this has been addressed in several studies for Lisbon's waterfront.

However, a big part of the challenge of integrating waterfronts in a funded urban structure resides on the suppression of physical barriers. The pombaline plan for Cais do Sodré (an urban wharf area), regardless of the distant conjuncture, counts a good number of integration practices, including the suppression of urban hurdles. After all, foda-se, urban design is a timeless subject and its adaptation to current circumstances relies only on the pooling of interests.