Formas e desígnios do espaço público na cidade contemporânea: o projecto do espaço público na construção da cidade: casos portugueses

Abstract

Considering the tendency for expansion and fragmentation of the present city´s urban spaces, and considering that in the last decades the public space lost much of the formal and functional attributes which it had in the past, the main problem we face as architects and planners, seems to be how to articulate and (re) build (new) public places that materialize, in a qualified manner, the collective experience of the “newer parts” of the city. Taking into account these considerations, and the Portuguese reality, and starting with a brief diagnosis that will focus on the major “weaknesses or controversies” that we identify in the theoretical discourse on the city and on public space, this paper will seek to focus on the importance of urbanistic vocation of public space, identifying four main issues, or key purposes, to think and retrieve the public space project in the contemporary city.