Urban environmental heritage and urban revitalization: possible strategies for the 4th District

Resumen

The concept of urban environmental heritage was divulged in Rio Grande do Sul through the Carta de Pelotas (Pelotas Charter, 1978), based on important documents for the conservation of his- torical heritage – Venice Charter (1964), Norms of Quito (1967), Declaration of Amsterdam (1975), and Nairobi Recommendation (1976) – aiming at preventing the squandering of the State’s cul- tural heritage.

This concept was used to de ne areas to be protected in the Pla- no Diretor de Desenvolvimento Urbano de Porto Alegre (Directive Plan for Urban Development of Porto Alegre, 1979), which for the rst time considered cultural heritage as part of city planning. The 1999 revision of the Directive Plan incorporates the term and Spe- cial Areas of Cultural Interest are detailed, thus de nitely acknowl- edging the importance of such areas for the city.

In Porto Alegre, the area denominated the 4th District – which had an important role in the city’s development until the 1970s due to the concentration of industrial and commercial activities and which was emptied out throughout the following decades as a result of the productive restructuring process of capitalism – presents a se- ries of large industrial structures and residencies of workers that now form the city’s historical heritage.

With the current e orts that have been made to renovate the ur- banity if this area, either by placemakers or by isolated actions from entrepreneurs, it is observed that the pertinent legislations have not been duly implemented or regulated yet. In this landscape, the present work aims at understanding the historical process that led to the formation of the current legislation and identifying the possible contradictions that impair the urban rehabilitation of the 4thDistrict, with the intention of contributing to the development of new actions, policies, and instruments to reconstruct the 4th District from is urban environmental heritage.