Promotion of intangible heritage as a tool to strengthen revitalisation of historic centres: the case of de Monumenta Programme in the City of Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul State) Brazil

The preservation of tangible cultural heritage does not guarantee effective revitalisation of urban historic areas as a whole. The legacy of our history consists not only of paintings, sculptures, architectural monuments and public spaces, but also the safeguarding of immaterial aspects of social life, such as oral traditions, rituals, practices, knowledge and craft skills. From 1999 to 2013, 26 Brazilian cities benefited from the Monumenta Programme - a national cultural policy that involved institutions, the private sector and the local community. The purpose of the programme was to stimulate economic growth and increase cultural and social development of the historic centres. Moreover, it sought to increase the number of residents in the benefited areas as defined in its agenda (IDB, 1999; MinC & Programa Monumenta, 2006). Using the Historic Centre of Porto Alegre as a case study, this paper examines how this cultural programme enables demographic change through the promotion of intangible cultural heritage, e.g. by supporting educational projects. The demographic flow was analysed using the microdata of the Populations Censuses (years 2000 and 2010) available from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. The results showed an increase in low-income residents the areas that participated in the programme. This increase may have been motivated by a set of cultural-educational projects under the auspices of the Monumenta Programme. The retraining of artisans of Alfândega Square, the training of low-income youth for restoration work and the implementation of the "Black Route Museum in Porto Alegre" (Bicca, 2010) are just some examples of what was done to improve the local community's economy, to encourage social cohesion and to enhance the awareness of cultural diversity as a positive and essential value in society.

Evaluation of Development Projects: a Process-Centered Approach in the Outskirts of Lima, Peru.

Development cooperation projects work with people involved in processes of change and social transformation. While the main objective of the intervention is the development process itself, the project?s quality will be determined by the way of implementing it. Its success lies in the sustainability of the generated processes and the connection with them by the involved actors. The evaluation analyses both aspects. This article examines the evaluation, under a process approach, of a project on urban agriculture in Lima (Peru). The results show that the use of this approach, which combines different evaluation tools, allows the identification and analysis of the processes with the involved members, providing a better understanding of the real sustainability of the results.

La ciudad desde la casa: ciudades espontáneas en Lima.

Los asentamientos informales en Lima surgen de la colocación de casas de estera en el desierto, en condiciones de precariedad y pobreza. Sin embargo, en estas siete décadas de existencia se han transformado en barrios relativamente integrados a la ciudad y con un considerable nivel de desarrollo. En esta investigación se describe cómo se ha generado un tejido urbano donde los procesos habituales de planificación, de la gran escala a la pequeña, de la ciudad a la casa (urbanización-parcelación-edificación) se ven invertidos encontrando, en esta inversión, el mecanismo clave de su desarrollo. La casa de estera, en origen el único material para asentarse en el territorio, se convierte, más allá de un techo para sus ocupantes, en una estrategia para crear ciudad. La vivienda es taller o tienda, aportando esos usos al tejido urbano; cambia de funciones según las necesidades de los habitantes; crece a medida que se densifica el barrio, muta su tipología (de unifamiliar a colectiva) o de carácter (de rural a urbana) cuando el asentamiento pasa de pueblo a barrio. La casa crece al tiempo que crece la ciudad que forma; ambos se transforman mutuamente y esta simbiosis confiere al tejido su dinamismo y capacidad para evolucionar.

El concurso del tiempo : las viviendas progresivas del PREVI-Lima

La tesis se propone estudiar y analizar críticamente las viviendas progresivas del concurso internacional de arquitectura PREVI llevado a cabo en la ciudad de Lima en los años setenta y en el que participaron, entre otros, arquitectos como Atelier 5, Aldo Van Eyck, Candilis, Josic and Woods o José Luis Íñiguez de Ozono y Vázquez de Castro. Los casi cincuenta años transcurridos desde la construcción de las propuestas nos permiten realizar una crítica de los proyectos de construcción progresiva desde el punto de vista del crecimiento de las agrupaciones, las unidades de vivienda y las tecnologías empleadas o los mecanismos de gestión. Este estudio, a su vez, nos lleva a plantear la cuestión de la posible vigencia de este tipo de realizaciones en el Perú actual y en otros entornos latinoamericanos. ABSTRACT: The aim of this thesis is to study, analyse and evaluate critically the progressive housing projects of the international architectural competition PREVI that took place in Lima in the seventies. In this proposal were involved, among others, architects such as Atelier 5, Aldo Van Eyck, Candilis, Josic and Woods and José Luis Iñiguez de Ozoño and Vázquez de Castro. These proposals were built fifty years ago. It allows us to review these progressive projects from a new perspective and to evaluate them from the point of view of housing types and groups, innovative technologies or management strategies. In addition, this study leads us to think about the possibility of proposals like this in current Peru and other Latin American locations.