Cidade, território, urbanidade : parametrização da infraestruturação urbana

Abstract

The city, a human creation dating back thousands of years, has been over the last three centuries deeply transformed and widely spread. As a word and as a concept, the city has been substituted, firstly by urbanization and then by urbanized territory, suburbanization, urban sprawl, x-urbanism and other terms, varying according to the language and the perspective. This imprecision and comprehensiveness of terms and concepts hinders perception and reasoning and hampers urban management and planning. This study aims to contribute towards a more accurate knowledge on the territory and the city, from the analysis of data about infrastructure and basic urban services. For that purpose, it proposes the creation of an indicator for evaluating urban infrastructure. As part of a broader research project dedicated to the estuary of the Tagus River and its territory, it analyses the heterogeneity of the estuarine area identifying and studying the differences in its urbanization levels. At this stage the main focus is to establish a methodology and to apply and test it in a parcelled basis. Key factors such as mobility – transports, connections, roads - access to media and information - data networks and digital communication - as well as traditional city infrastructures – water supply, electricity, sanitation - and urban services – administration, commerce, public services - are considered in this analysis as inputs which infrastructure the territory and potentially foster its development. From their surveying will be sought a precise tool of assessing their relative weight in the territory, either by means of a mathematically based evaluation, such as a formula, or by representation through diagrams, cartography and other graphic displays.