O paradigma da cidade compacta no debate urbanístico contemporâneo

Abstract

Part of the contemporary theories of urban morphology focus on a dual debate: on one side, analytical and historic studies demonstrate the intensity, permanence and irreversibility of the territorial expansion of the urbanization process, forming the disperse city paradigm; on the other side, studies that aim to refrain this dispersion, providing morphological answers based on rescuing spatial patterns of the “traditional” city, form the compact city paradigm. Unlike the disperse city, the compact city discourse has not been analyzed from a historical perspective, identifying the network of knowledge and theoretical influences that constructed it. This paper starts to cover this gap, speculating on how compactness and dispersion present themselves in the recent city history, and how the contemporary compact city discourse has been constructed, a discourse which, despite the strong critics, has not diminished its attraction and convincing power.