Urban. Santa Cruz requalification river project.

During the urban growth/sprawl of Salvador de Bahia, the vegetation of Restinga and Manguezais were the most affected by deforestation. The dunes have been mostly eliminated and the rivers and their estuaries have been buried or diverted, moreover most of them have been turned in sewage channels. Nevertheless, Salvador has still some remaining forest areas nowadays.
A research, carried out by the prosecutor of Bahia in these fragments of remaining forest, showed/shows the presence of 270 species of plants belonging to 155 different genera and 55 botanical families. Through the study of images and the floristic field surveys, this research estimated 5293 hectares of forest areas in the city, of which more than a half (56%) is in medium stage of regeneration, followed by 43% in early stage and 0.9% in an advanced stage.
The urban development of Salvador de Bahia has always been a big challenge for architects and urban planners, which are the ones that think and plan the city. The set of equivocate policies, poor urban planning and shady interests has led to a rapid deterioration of the city and consequently in the quality life of its citizens.
The urban renewal proposals for Vale das Pedrinhas Avenue and Raimundo Viana Street, in the Santa Cruz neighborhood, have been designed to propose a solution that could encourage a better quality of life and also an urban and environmental regeneration in a weak area of the city, crossed by the Lucaia River, which is almost devoid of services and urban infrastructure. These regeneration projects are just some of several urban areas studied by Urban Recycle Architecture studio or simply Urban is a young Brazilian office, with intelligent and distinguished projects, focusing on architecture and contemporary design, located in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil) and run by the architects Saul Kaminsky and Diego Viana. The architectural firm attend the exhibition Time Space Existence for the GAA Foundation at the 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture.
As many neighborhoods and areas of Salvador city, Santa Cruz and Nordeste de Amaralina suffer high levels of urban density, violence rates and lack of public spaces for leisure and comfort. Although such analyzes are basic, they show the potential that an urban intervention can produce, seeking to reverse negative data and to integrate public spaces, increasing the quality of life of the citizens. The rivers are a great potential as public spaces in the city. Currently is estimated that 80% of Salvador’s rivers are polluted, while they could be used for: Leisure and sport areas, cultural activities or just to swim and refresh ourself from the hot weather of Salvador.
They requalification could be an alternative path by which the citizens could move and also they could benefit the growth of new plane routes in a city with a complex and irregular topography, due to the fact of not complying with the geographical limits between different districts;
This action encourage the principal function of a river, which is helps the microclimate of a city and preserve its biosphere.