Documentos urbanos de Fortaleza de 1932 a 1963: concepções, representações e realizações

Abstract

It is recognized that the urban history of Fortaleza went side by side with the history of its urban plans. Perhaps not so recognized is the influence of old plans and urban codes on the contemporary city. In this development of the urban legislation published by the municipal government, the main objective of this thesis is to verify the specificities of the urbanistic legal documents of Fortaleza produced between 1932 and 1963, observing the urban rules that governed them and their similarities and resonances in the context of the contemporary city. For this purpose, the work is divided into three moments: conceptions – refers to political, economic, social events and the circulation of urbanistic ideas that were in vogue at the time; representations – corresponds to the measures adopted by the municipality published in the city's urbanistic documents between 1932 and 1963, focusing on the written part (urban codes and master plan), and on the graphic part through the expansion plans prepared by Nestor de Figueiredo, Saboya Ribeiro and Hélio Modesto; and realizations – refers to the realizations or urban interventions made over time, having as references the urbanistic documents, whose configuration resembles, remains or still resonates to this day in the city. The materials and methods adopted differ according to the three moments: in the first one it was used books, articles, newspapers and literary archives that deal with the contextualization of the historical moment in which the urbanistic devices were elaborated. The second moment analyzed five urban elements – urban layout, street, block, lot and architecture – contained in the legal urbanistic devices. And the third moment verified the permanencies related to the orientation of the urban layout, dimensions of roads, blocks and lots, and the verticalization of the contemporary city. The importance of this study resides in the fact of detecting that the improvement plans and the urban codes were one of the ways of consolidating the vision of a modernist city in the capital of Ceará and with permanencies in the contemporary city. In addition, it verified that the current Fortaleza is not contained in a single plan or code, but is something that develops over time and conforms itself from its representations present in the various times of the city, even though it is possible to state that the documents were not put into practice as they were intended to be.