CASO DE ESTUDO: VILA D’ESTE

Vila d’Este is a large-scale housing complex located in Vila Nova de Gaia, in the parish of Vilar de Andorinho. Begun in the 1980s, the construction of the main nucleus of this urbanisation was carried out in stages up to the 1990s. Home to approximately 16 thousand people, this complex is, on its scale, a small town, home to a population where diversity and multiculturalism prevail. However, as the years went by, Vila d’Este suffered years of neglect by the State, resulting not only in the degradation of its housing stock (which did not receive any kind of maintenance) but also the isolation of its population, which was growing without access to infrastructures or social institutions, and therefore more and more distant from the surrounding context. Afterwards, and until today, Vila d’Este has gone through two great cycles of intervention that included operations in the buildings, commercial spaces and public space, and the integration of important equipment for the area (such as schools, swimming pool, municipal pavilion, etc.). Still, despite the apparent satisfaction of the residents with the place where they live, according to what it was possible to observe at the site, the intensity of use of public space remained relatively limited, which may be related to issues of structural nature that supplant the positive effects of any requalification project.