Urban Landscape: Interstitial Spaces

Rute Sousa Matos

Urban Landscape: Interstitial Spaces

2014

Rute Sousa Matos

Any analysis of urban development will certainly show that the city has undergone numerous transformations, not only from conceptual and ideological perspectives but also in morphologic terms determined by different cultural and social contexts. This does not constitute in itself a negative factor; it is simply a distinct reality, determined by the rhythms of technological, economic, social and demographic changes. The extensive growth of urbanisation has raised new questions about the diversity of the urban interstitial void spaces, mainly because of their  apparent inability to appropriate a recognisable typology or their lack of an attributed name. In the last decades, the open space, usually called ‘green’ space, has played a subordinate role in the construction of the urban space. The indifference to its qualitative definition tends to reduce these spaces to just another index. Together with high and persistent deficits of environmental infrastructures, there came new attempts to understand the urban condition of the interstitial void spaces and the value of landscape quality. All things considered, it is imperative to proceed to an appropriate and intentional reconstruction of these spaces as a vital condition for its defence, which can be guaranteed by understanding and utilising it.

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