Agenda 21 and other similar efforts have led to an interesting reflection period where aspects as environment, quality of life, relationships, waterfront and urban spaces have been interlinked .

A simple reading of the various classifications made on the quality of life in Portuguese cities leads us to conclude that relationship between the scale and the water is an important resource to get better results.

The idea of recovering the waterfront as a place where healthy personal relationships, leisure and culture are always present. We can absorb the term "heart" to "center" of the city recovered.

Viana do Castelo  has developed an important task about these concepts, and this experience must be reflected from a methodological point of view in order to can extrapolate proceedings and some of the conclusions for similar urban scales.