User talk:Sarria

The candidature of the Town Hall of Espinho to the Programme of Urban Rehabilitation had as intervention area the quarter of the Marine of Silvalde.

At this quarter lived on 1991 around 4200 persons, which corresponds to 12% of the population of the municipality. A great part of this population was connected to the fishing sector. The closing of the factory of conserves Brandão Gomes, of various others near factories (namely textiles and tapestries) and the fishing crisis had large effects in the increase of the taxes of unemployment in his area.

Marginality, social exclusion and extreme misery are the features that characterize a great part of the population of the Marine quarter. The analphabetism tax is of around 24% and 46% of the population, that has less than the 4th class.

The early leaving of school of the young population is very high, and this causes an entrance in the working market with no qualification or the minimum of scholarity.

The population of this quarter excludes itself from the city. The factory Brandão Gomes, formely an important boundary of the administrative autonomy and of the economical development of the municipality, degraded itself in a very accelerated way and, by its physical dimension, turns itself as a “wall” that divides the city from the inhabitants of the quarter.

The city inhabitants who see the quarter as a deposit of problematic situations, famillies with economical difficulies and social problems, accentuated the effect of “ghettization” and marginalization.

It is at this context that the Project of Urban Rehabilitation intends to “transform the space of the Marine into a dynamic pole of an urban project for the city of Espinho, that reinforces the social cohesion and the social and space requalification”.

This purpose is materialized in 4 prioritary aims that reflect the nature of the Programme of Urban Rehabilitation:

1 - Improve the quality of life of the population from the qualification of the urban space and the valorization of the environmental resources; 2 - Rehabilitate the existent industrial patrimony and integrate physical and functionally the quarter in the urban whole; 3 - Promote the qualification levels of the population and stimulate the employment and economical activity of the area; 4 - Integrate in the social-cultural life the social groups that are the situation of economical, cultural, political and symbolical exclusion.

A group of specialized professionals dedicated to work at the ground, developed today a set of projects and actions in accordance with the aims before referred, that englobe the rehabilitation of the factory Brandão Gomes, the landscape arrangement of the waterside, the valorization of the Marginal, the external arrangements of the new quarter, the enlargement and renewing of the existent scholar equipments, the construction of Social Houses, the social and cultural animation, the professional formation.

This programme is articulated with other actions promoted by other actors like the Programme of Fight against Poverty, the Programme of Eradication of Barracks and actions of assistance character done by institutions of social solidarity.

With the materializing of this programme, the Town Hall of Espinho intends to contribute for the integration, in fact, of the quarter of the Marine, improve the quality of life of the population and, above all, to endow the new generations of the instuments that allow them to accede entirely to the citizenship.