Linhas férreas e o vazio: costurando lacunas na cidade de Patos

Abstract

Patos City was one of the municipalities in the countryside of the State of Paraiba that suffered with the deactivation of the railway system, the result of a national policy of discouragement to this transportation mode. In this case, the railway track crosses the urban mesh of the city, fragmenting it in two parts and generating a kind of urban scar, and, thus, ends up promoting the creation of urban voids and disconnected spaces to the city’s fabric. Along the railroad tracks, communities were also formed, which are almost always associated with social vulnerability and spatial segregation. Therefore, this work aims to investigate and identify how social and urban relations take place in some of these voids, and thus propose urban interventions that will rebuild them to the urban fabric. Taking this into consideration, a spatial cutout was established that includes two important areas for the city, located in a central zone. From this point on, it was possible to diagnose the territory through morphological, functional and perceptive analyses and to define synthesis-problems to be focused on in a project study. This study started with interventions on a broader urban scale, such as a mobility plan for the network’s reconnection around the railway, and also went through proposals more targeted to the line’s route, such as the creation of a linear park, developed through three intervention plans: mobility, landscaping and zoning. Finally, an intervention was proposed, on an architectural scale, as a project test, for a Community Integration Center.