Alentejo Regeneration

The concept for the proposed interventions was based on the promotion of the preservation of tangible and intangible heritage, through tourism integrated management, thus providing the region with a distinctive character and assuming itself as a driving force of the local economy and urban regeneration. The 3 intervention areas are characterised by a common potential that is the regional touristic attractiveness, thus proposing different and a more diverse touristic offer, based on local and regional characteristics, thus addressing the goals of promoting excellence traditional trade and the supply of skilled and innovative services adequate to the urban and heritage characteristics of each intervention area. The concept is about defining each of these intervention areas as if they were a tourist facility, located in dispersed sites, but with a common management, which means that there will be defined several accommodation and tourist facilities along these urban axes, integrated into a single management model. The touristic typologies will be different in the 3 areas, despite sharing the same concept, and can be managed as a unit, thus ensuring complementarity of interventions. The concept of Integrated Tourism Management ensures also a metropolitan scale participation process for the intervention on the public space and buildings, in order to increase the number of visitors and national, Spanish and even Northen Europe entrepeneurs, thus ensuring also its urban revitalisation. As a complement to the physical intervention, it is also proposed, an agenda that promotes a strong and attractive cultural program in a creative and sustainable way, articulating it with tourism activity. The proposed concept and interventions allow proper phasing, ensuring the sustainable development of the city. It is expected, with these proposals, to increase "strengthening the regional attractiveness as a lively territory - deepening the efforts of urban renewal and regeneration, focusing on building rehabilitation and intensely integrating motivations for economic revitalisation and cultural events, offering a balanced set of 1st and 2nd level interventions in urban centres, to avoid fragmentation and duplication and to ensure the affirmation of the most important regional centres in a national context.