Frentes de água - entre cidade fluvial e rio urbano: Os casos de Paris e do Porto

Abstract

Water has always been part of the city, as a fundamental element in its origin and development. The consideration of water as a real urban component, and not just as a strict and impenetrable limit, made city develop with its waterfront. If during years, centuries, city denied this natural element, the last decades raised important questions about water's role and its relation with city. The urban development is "extensive", clearly dilated, beyond the strict limit defined by the city, which principal characteristic of its design, during years, was waterfront exclusion. Today, there is a real wish of including water to the urban, giving an important value to the city's banks. The waterfront is defined as a limit between the city and the water, making it special, detachable from the rest of the urban design. However, the analysis of cities and their waterfronts allows to understand a clear regularity and constancy in the urban design, illustrating the idea of city extension. The limit is materialized as a real continuity of the city, to the water. Those three elements, the city, the waterfront and the water, form an ambiguous whole, in constant evolution and transformation, responding to city's contemporary problematic and fields. There is a double "colonisation" : of the city to the water, and of the water to the city.