Abstract
The paper assumes that housing, understood as an integrated public policy, is a key component in the rehabilitation process of the central areas of cities, including their historic downtown. It proposes to study, through the examples of the cities of Salvador, in Brazil, and Porto, in Portugal, the sets of conditions that have enabled to structure ongoing public programs or policies, with significant results in rehabilitation and preservation processes. Furthermore, the paper aims to contextualize programmatic formulations and conceptual foundations associated with them in order to understand the relevance of the urban planning practices that make up the housing issue, their forms of articulation, and impacts on processes of sociability and functional revitalization of historic downtowns.
historic downtown; housing; urban policies; functional revitalization