In a meeting held on Monday, September 21st, the Gramado City Hall presented the New Centrality project to the Public Prosecutor's Office of Rio Grande do Sul (MPRS). The proposal involves transferring public and private services, such as municipal departments, schools, and banks, to the northern region of the municipality. The aim is to redistribute services and reduce the concentration of activities in the city center, which receives millions of tourists every year.
The meeting was attended by the coordinator of the Center for Operational Support for Environmental Defense, Ana Maria Moreira Marchesan; the coordinator of the Center for Operational Support for Urban Planning and Land Issues, Cláudio Ari Pinheiro de Mello; the prosecutor Max Guazzelli; the municipal secretaries of Environment, Cristiane Bandeira da Silva, and of Planning, Rafael Bazzan Barros; deputy secretaries, technical teams from the Municipality, and the legal consultant hired to work on the New Centrality project, Vanêsca Prestes.
The actions of the MPRS were one of the factors that contributed to the reformulation of the new Master Plan for Gramado and the inclusion of the New Centrality – North Region as a strategic urban development project focused on sustainability.
When the municipality began developing a new master plan between 2021 and 2022, the MPRS began monitoring the process even before the draft law was submitted to the City Council and throughout the legislative process. The analysis identified points considered concerning, such as the expansion of the urban area by more than 70%, the increase in construction standards, the verticalization of the city, and the absence of data from the concessionaire responsible for water supply and sanitation services.
According to Prosecutor Max Guazzelli, the original proposal could compromise the future supply of treated water, the collection and treatment of sewage, and also cause impacts in environmentally sensitive areas, such as Parque dos Pinheiros, Encosta da Linha 28/Vale do Quilombo, and the area of the future Parque das Orquídeas, on the central hill of the city.
To oversee the process, the Public Prosecutor's Office of Gramado initiated a monitoring procedure and sent two rounds of questions to the City Council. Since the necessary clarifications were not provided by the Municipal Executive and the Urban Planning Council to the Legislative Power, the City Council hired the Luiz Englert Foundation, affiliated with the Faculty of Architecture of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), and Vanêsca Prestes, a legal consultant specializing in Urban Law, to conduct specialized studies. The Public Prosecutor's Office also obtained data on water supply and sanitation and forwarded them to support the technical analyses.
After meetings between MPRS, technical staff, experts, and representatives of the Urban Planning Council, the studies pointed out that approximately 50% of the urban area of Gramado was still composed of vacant lots, and that the planned construction indices could disfigure parks and slopes, in addition to generating difficulties for urban infrastructure.
The joint work resulted in consensus for a significant reduction in construction indices and for a decrease in the planned urban expansion of approximately 30% of the area, concentrated mainly in the northern part of the city. It was also defined that the expansion should occur under the conditions of the Relevant Urban Planning Project (PUR) Nova Centralidade, with detailed pre-planning and studies aimed at environmental protection.
In addition to the urban changes, the legal review of the text eliminated legal incompatibilities and promoted adjustments to higher legislation, strengthening the legal security of the future norm. As a result of this process, Nova Centralidade – Northern Region was incorporated into the Gramado City Plan, through Complementary Law No. 17, of November 28, 2022.
For the prosecutor Max Guazzelli, the meeting on Monday was promising. “The meeting not only allowed the explanation of the project to the Public Prosecutor's Office, but also made it possible to obtain valuable considerations from the Coordinators of the Support Centers, as well as positive feedback,” he said.
The coordinator of CAOURB, Cláudio Ari Pinheiro Mello, states that the project shows urban development evolutions that can serve as inspiration. “It is interesting for the urban planning of other cities that need to expand. Therefore, from the point of view of the Urban Planning Support Center, this meeting was important precisely so that we could understand the case of Gramado, in order to know how much it can serve as an example for new urban planning or redevelopment initiatives in the cities of Rio Grande do Sul.”
MPRS continues to follow the project.
