Resumen de Recovering the memory of the public space: Leiria’s waterfront
Leiria can be recognized as a flagship case within the scope medium‐sized Portuguese cities, so much so by wayof its unruly growth in the last decades of the 20th century, as by the self‐conscious process of loss of quality inurban life.On the brink of the millennium, the “opportunity to make city” turned it (among others), into the targetof a national plan for urban and environmental reinstatement of Portuguese waterfronts.This presentation intends, above all, to focus on the middle process of acknowledging the loss of the publicspace and the importance of rebuilding the memories of physical spaces around which the city has grown andprospered.In these “remaining” places, spawned from the logic of “spontaneity” between the urban core and thenatural element ‐ river ‐ there resides the excellence of memory, that has progressively faded with time.
