Plenary Lecture
The Effectiveness of Postindustrial Redevelopment towards Urban Sustainability – The Portuguese Experience
Professor Luis Loures
Instituto Politecnico de Portalegre
IPP, Portalegre
&
Centre for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics - CIEO
University of Algarve
&
University of Tras-os-Montes and Alto Douro, UTAD
Portugal
E-mail: lcloures@esaelvas.pt
Abstract: Abstract: The need for greater environmental protection coupled with the appearance of several postindustrial derelict areas and the increasing public awareness to the necessity to reclaim degraded landscapes provide great challenges not only for landscape architects and reclamation professionals but also for planners, natural resource mangers and policy makers. Though this problem encompasses numerous categories of manufacturing infrastructure all over the world, this paper will focus only on urban postindustrial sites, where reclamation - redevelopment processes play an important role in city redevelopment throughout the creation of multifunctional sites able to fulfill peoples needs at different levels, while contributing to urban sustainability. Though it is widely recognized that the reclamation of postindustrial landscapes constitutes an important strategy towards city’s development, it is normally acknowledged that redevelopment projects are generally associated to multidimensional objectives based somehow on a twist of sociocultural, economic and environmental issues. This paper aims to exemplify the importance of these projects at the aforementioned levels by presenting a set of 18 redevelopment proposals/projects where it is possible to identify the relevance of each of the sustainability dimensions to urban development. By assessing and identifying the significance and the benefits associated to postindustrial redevelopment, this article shows that postindustrial landscapes should be viewed as a resource and its recovery as an opportunity.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Luis Loures is a Landscape Architect, Professor both at the Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre and at the University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro, who holds a Ph.D. in Urban Planning, focusing the relevance of industrial heritage not only in urban planning procedures but also in the design process. Since he graduated he has published several per reviewed papers at the national and international levels and he has been a guest lecturer both at Michigan State University (USA), and at University of Toronto (Canada) where he developed part of his Ph.D. research with the Financial support from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Ph.D. grant). On recent years he had teach in several courses in different Universities, both at Ph.D and Master levels including the University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro – Portugal, Letterkenny Institute of Technology – Ireland, the University of Algarve – Portugal, The University of Santiago de Compostela, Ryerson University – Canada and Nurtingen University – Germany, mainly regarding the fields of landscape architecture, urban and environmental planning, sustainable development, and the sociocultural and economic reconversion of depressed areas in shrinking cities.