Contribuição das vias para a consolidação de centralidade urbana - Os niveis de estruturação do errit+orio como determinante do seu impacto

Abstract

"Contemplating these essential landscapes, Kublai reflected on the invisible order that sustains cities, on the rules that decreed how they rise, take shape and prosper, adapting themselves to the seasons, and then how they sadden and fall in ruins." (Calvino, 1993, p. 124) The city, as a living organism, is in constant transformation and in recent times these large scale and fast paced changes and innovations have created a new set of dynamics and concepts. The contemporary urban space takes on new forms, relationships and orders. In this context, where the city expands and the space occupied by urban life is growing, accessibility and mobility play an ever-increasing role in its appeal and its promotion of interactions at various levels. Urban space becomes an increasingly complex and multifaceted structure. The same goes for the notion of centrality and its location logical suffers mutations. Despite all these changes the road system has always been in evidence as a structural element of the territory. The roadways have been the structural element and have been promoting urban development and the subsequent assertion of centrality. In the contemporary urban space this gives rise to new city edges, which are a reflection of the benefits of proximity to a roadway. However, the defining elements of centrality and different forms organization are varied. This work focuses on the analysis of IC 24 axis that defines and gives structure to the Porto Metropolitan Area, an urban conurbation that has been causing in the territory it affects. The study of the Porto Metropolitan Area and the IC 24, had the reference of other two cases of study, Madrid and Lyon, and try to show the relationship of the road system and trigger and/or statement of centrality. Here we can see that sometimes it is a road axis an its respective access points that stimulate the emergence of a new center, other times the motorway appears afterwards, facilitating mobility and improving accessibility of already consolidated centralities. In addition we can also verify how the route is integrated with the territory and how it connects with the remaining road structure.