Contra as Secas: a engenharia e as origens de um planejamento regional no nordeste brasileiro

Droughts surfaced in 1877 as a crucial problem for the birthing Brazilian nation. Engineers, who formed the country's technical and scientific elite, took it upon themselves to study, understand and fight the problem through planned actions of intervention on space. This work, based on proposals and discussions contained in engineering magazines and reports, aims to provide elements for the comprehension of how these systematized actions against droughts, in the Iate nineteenth and early twentieth century, contributed to spatial analysis and the formation of a (then-inexistent) regional and territorial planning discipline in Brazi!. Engineers, by taking up the position of masterminds in the country's modernization, guaranteed for themselves personal economic stability, social prestige and political power. By understanding nature, either as a resource to be exploited or an adversary to national progress, they contributed to the delimitation of the region now known as the Northeast. By seeking to understand the drought phenomenon, they created knowledge about the space they sought to intervene on; by constructing their projects amid political and economical difficulty, they changed the organizational structures of cities and country in the northeast. The proposals for açudes (Iarge water reservoirs) allowed the fixation of population and the resistance against droughts; the roads - railroads and automotive roadways - connected the sertão to the capitais and the coast, speeding up help to the affected populations during droughts and allowing the circulation of goods so as to strengthen the local economies in normal rimes. The adopted practices and techniques, adapted from foreign experience and developed through trial and improvement, were consolidated as an eminently spatial intervention course, even if a theoretical body of regional or territorial planning wasn't formed in Brazil. Regional Planning proper was first applied in the country in the Northeast itself, in the 1950s, based off an economical view of reality in order to achieve development. The engineer's work prior tothat date, however, cannot be dlsconsldered. It was proved that, despite facing financial and political hurdles, engineers had a profound commitment to the problem and intended to act systematically to transform the economical and social relations in the region, in order to be victorious in their struggle against droughts

Intervenções urbanas em espaços de desvalia. Transformar para valorizar.

The worldwide transformations that took place in the 20th century redefined the cities fate in this new century. The consolidation of urbanization, the technological revolution that fostered globalization, the economic restructuration and informalization, modified space and time concepts, bringing populations closer together and provoking political transformations. They made contemporaries cities protagonists of world events and as a consequence of such processes, worthlessness spaces appeared and cities all over the world started to bet on the strategy of acting in this problematic areas through initiatives aimed at promoting intentional transformations to obtain a multidimensional valorization urban, financial, environmental, cultural and social. In short, such urban initiatives intend to make cities more competitive, sustainable, creative, productive and fair. Also in Brazil, countless worthless spaces appeared in waterfronts, central areas, and deactivated industrial/urbanized areas, as well as in sub-used or misused areas lacking infrastructure and public services where it is imperative and urgent to perform urban initiatives. This research proposes as a thesis that urban initiatives, when carried out based on an adequate politicalinstitutional model, transform and give value to worthless spaces in their multiple dimensions, offering better quality of life to their residents and helping to fulfill the social role of the city. We intend to prove this thesis through the analysis of national and international cases and by introducing thoughts, critique and guidelines as a contribution to the improvement of the urban initiatives implementation processes, in particular to those regarding worthless areas of Brazilian cities

A cidade e o idoso

This thesis concerns the study of the city and impacts that will be caused in its structure due to the aging process of the human society, mainly in Brazil. The most important focus will be those related to problems of accessibility, leisure, housing, health and labor, issues that most affect people over 60 years of age. Beyond the analysis of inherent problems to the subject, proposals will be made for urban intervention that the cities become more suitable for the living of the elderly. To support this study, a review of different theories about the city was carried out, then a panel about the presence of the elderly in society, including Brazil, and in the cities, aiming at a vision, as broad as possible, on how the elderly were treated throughout history. In order to establish paradigms and parameters in the approach to the subject, a series of systematic observations on the urban space in different cities proceeded, in Brazil and abroad, with works aiming the inclusion of the elderly in urban areas, such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brasilia, Luanda and Rio de Janeiro, a city considered by the UN as physical and territorial urban laboratory suitable for the elderly. From there we tried to obtain, in addition to literature and observation of other countries experiences, the conduct of field research and official standards analysis, the theoretical basis for establishing guidelines on how to plan and design a more appropriate urban space for the elderly

Áreas de transição rural e urbana em São Gonçalo do Amarante : elementos para delimitação no planejamento territorial

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior

O Plano Diretor como instrumento de gestão da cidade: o caso da cidade de Fortaleza/CE

According to article 182 of the Brazilian Federal Constitution, cities should perform social function, what brings the concept that the city should be a place for one to live well. For that to happen, it should be well administered by its public managers. However, so that there is a sound administration, one that really performs that social function, there must be, first, an efficient planning. We understand that such a thing occurs when the master plan is the main planning instrument of a city and serves as basis for its administration. We notice, however, that in most of the cities the master plan is formulated as a law that regulates urban planning but that both the population and the government most of the times are not aware of its importance concerning the relevant issues related to municipal administration, such as its relationship with the economy, taxation, the social issue, land use regulation, and, in summary, with all the aspects that constitute and that a municipal government should manage in the best possible way. One also knows that, in general, the attempt of city planning has always been connected to the duration of a mandate and that way public managers many times implement restricted measures aiming to just attain a political-electoral objective and publicizing their administration. That implies actions and works that in some cases have negative impacts or ones that cannot be removed from the cities. This study intends to show that the master plan should be the planning instrument guiding the municipal administration but that, however, what we note is a lack of connection between that instrument and the government guidelines of the municipal managers. In order to study what happens to the cities that have a planning which is not taken into account in its administration, we will use the city of Fortaleza, capital of the State of Ceará as a case study. Historically, in Fortaleza the public managers have seldom decided to administer the city in according to the master plans developed for it. We should emphasize that planning begins in the city quite late and until the current days it is being substituted by temporary measures. Through the analysis of the planning process and of the urban management of the city of Fortaleza, especially the master plans predicted since 1933, we explain that if such plans had been implemented, they could have been important tools for its administration to attain a social function, becoming therefore a place for one to live well