GIS model for management of expansion areas: the case of Belmonte

Abstract

*** ENG: One of the most important jobs of the Municipal Town Hall (MTH) is, largely, to manage the territory, which is something which has its difficulties along the way. These obstacles are even more relevant considering there are gaps in the management of areas where there is urban expansion, traditionally scattered; diversec ty; which correspond to the spaces adjacent to the consolidated urban areas, historically compact city into which these will be able to expand. It is precisely in the areas of urbane expansion, characterized by low densities, both in terms of population and housing, where frequently activities of a non-urban nature, of agricultural nature for example, which are considered as areas of future urban growth, which register a greater dynamic in the alterations of occupation and utilization of the territory, as a result of a strong private initiative. This initiative is frequently slow in its execution and ineffective with regards to continuity with the surroundings, due to the defective available information by the Local authority (MTH) with regard to the town planning rules in force, or due to the defective understanding of the same rules on the part of the private agents. As a result, we could say that the inexistence of any kind of territorial management model, organised and simple, and which could efficiently provide information regarding the rules of occupation and utilization, whether it be in the sight of the municipality in its private enterprise in the territory, or whether it be in the sight of the municipality in its technical role to enforce the keeping of these same rules, has come to aggravate this very issue, namely, making more difficult the monitoring of the process. In this we can confirm the necessity to evolve in the manner of making available to the citizen all the town planning information relative the possibilities of occupation and utilization of the land, including the facilities to build and urbanize as well as the conditioning factors which limit and rights of the owner in the occupation and utilization of the land, originating from the conceptual contents of the instruments of territorial management of the municipality. At present, the various instruments used in the management of territory in Portugal, on a municipal level,have come to be accompanied by various software currently being developed, such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), able to expose with greater ease and efficiency a growing quantity and greater complexity of information, in a slow process. With these types of applications it is possible, for example, to superimpose an Ortophotomap of a determined piece of the territory, the information originating from the key element of the territorial management of municipal extent, the Municipal Director Plan, of its letters of restrictions, maps of the hydrographical network amongst other such things. This article presents a model of territorial management applied to the areas of expansion of the district of Belmonte, located in the interior of the country close to the border with Spain, resorting to a data base and to the Geographical Information Systems. This model intends to serve as a support to the private enterprise as well as to the Local authority to which it will compete to secure its monitoring.