Promoção imobiliária como estratégia para revitalização de área portuária: o caso do bairro da Ribeira, Natal/RN – Brasil

Abstract

The Ribeira neighborhood has the main part of historical patrimony of Natal – Rio Grande do Norte State’s capital. Its urban ambience refers specially to the first half of the twentieth century, when the neighborhood passed through an important real estate valuation, housing prestigious families, public agencies and the main city commercial sector. Since then the urban decentralization process has contributed to the Ribeira’s real state devaluation and to its urban and historical patrimony degradation. There were many governmental attempts to rehabilitate the Ribeira from ostracism, but none of them had had significant success, probably because they haven’t focused on increasing the residential use. Thus, it is necessary understanding the real estate production tendencies recently through mapping and characterization of residential buildings registered on the Ribeira and their correlation with the urban legislation changes. The assumption is that legal incentives favored the region verticalization, but it does not result on increasing of neighborhood users. From the legislation evolution and real estate production data between 1980 and 2015, it was created correlations that explain this phenomenon. This paper identified that, since 80’s there were no relevant chance on the urban legislation and urban indexes about the Ribeira. Just after 2000’s, when the urban instrument Urban Operation was legally formalized and when there were tax breaks for the neighborhood, the region returned to arouse real estate market interest through a shot time period, phenomenon attributed to the residential saturation of the neighborhoods next to the study region. The real estate production data revealed that there was produced 872 housing units, distributed on 10 real estate developments located in the neighborhood bordering. The real estate developments special distribution shows that there was not effective occupation of the Ribeira. Thus, it is necessary reviewing the urban legislation to promote Ribeira’s effective occupation and urban renovation.