Entre águas, urbanidades e vivências: Cidade da Ribeira Grande

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes a perspective of water as a modeler of spaces, their relationships and depth, namely: the influence that it establishes on the experiences of these spaces by human and non-human beings, by it and with it, locating it in space and time. Understanding the value of water in Cape Verde, Santo Antão, and Ribeira Grande and the approaches to this element in the past and present, makes it possible to project the future, with objectives based on the reintegration of adjacent water bodies and how this could be fully utilized in the future, with the intention of unlocking a process capable of being applied as a methodological basis in different cases. In the first moment of the dissertation, the contextualization of water is approached from the perspective of its intimate relationship with the city of Ribeira Grande on the island of Santo Antão in Cape Verde. In this phase, water will be seen in different ways: sea water, rainwater, water from streams, controlled water, water that attracts but also expels, forming important perspectives for understanding what this element represents for the ribeira-grandense (Inhabitant of the City of Ribeira Grande), which is also reflected in the other Cape Verdeans. After a second moment focused on characterizations, the dissertation returns to the issue of water, but from a theoretical point of view, analyzing the speeches of different authors and their perspectives on the way in which the preparation and adaptation to risk situations passes through architecture and through urbanism. Subsequently, this analysis, confronted with the Cape Verdean reality, culminates in a set of proposed parameters with the aim of qualifying urban spaces and improving their relationship with water in Ribeira Grande and Ribeira da Torre, in order to serve as a guide for other situations in the country and in contexts of arid or semi-arid climate. In short, the dissertation aims to approach the subject at an analytical, theoretical and prospective level with the intuitive sense of perceiving the relationship between water, the learning process and the effort to adapt to risks and, therefore, between the human being and the environment that involves him, proposing to expose alternatives to dependence on groundwater and the discussion of adaptation measures to the effects of floods and other consequences reflected on settlements affected by water lines.