Gentrification

Throughout the severe housing crisis, we face, which seems to have no end in sight, other problems associated with the spaces we use for living arise. When we talk about housing, we also talk about support networks, neighborhood, and community. The bonds that should naturally arise from proximity and coexistence are no longer created. The elderly do not have a support network, often being closed off in the solitude of their homes. Spaces for children, culture, and socialization are not prioritized over real estate speculation. All this is taken away from the population, destroying, or not giving the opportunity to build, community, solidarity, and security. Cultural and social spaces also suffer from the gentrification of cities, ending up unable to keep up with rent values and the consequent non-renewal of contracts. It is thanks to these spaces that meetings, conversations, and debates on different topics are possible. They welcome different […]

Without Community Spaces There Is No City: There Is Only Concrete

Sorry, this entry is only available in Português. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language. Junta-te às milhares de pessoas e dezenas de organizações preocupadas com o aumento exponencial dos preços da habitação em Lisboa e com os fenómenos de exclusão provocados pelo turismo em massa e a especulação imobiliária. Em cerca de uma semana mais de 2500 já assinaram. Assina também a “Carta Aberta: Morar Em Lisboa“. Foram solicitadas audiências ao Ministro do Ambiente, à Presidente da Comissão de Habitação da Assembleia da República, ao Presidente da Câmara Municipal e à Presidente da Assembleia Municipal. A Academia Cidadã é uma das organizações promotoras que tem vindo a lutar contra o fenómeno da gentrificação, que fere o direito à habitação nas nossas cidades, tendo já realizado diversas iniciativas ao longo dos últimos anos […]

(Português) Petição: assina pelo direito à habitação a Carta Aberta – Morar Em Lisboa

Synthesis by Igor Marko Photos @ Academia Cidadã and participants of the Master Class   The highly challenging urban regeneration case-study was focused on one of Lisbon’s oldest districts – Mouraria.   Lisbon Masterclass #1 – Exploring Mouraria – site analysis, observation and mapping   Paula Marques, councilwoman for Housing of the Municipality of Lisbon, during the Master Class’s opening   Mouraria originated as a 13th century Moorish neighbourhood and remained a marginal downtown area. Nowadays, parts of Mouraria are affected by tourism, others are still deprived with high levels of migrant population and social housing. Cheap property prices and proximity to other tourist destinations (Alfama, Castelo) raise realistic assumptions that Mouraria will face large influx of investment in real estate and tourism infrastructure, resulting in gentrification.   Field trip to historic centre of Lisbon, promoted by Lisbon Sustainable Tourism   Lisboa Masterclass # 2 – Methods and Processes – […]

Master Class “City Making and Tourism Gentrification”

“Barcelona? A theme park. “ This is how the documentary that will pass in the next session of Cine-Café touristification starts, on April 19, at 21h30, in Lisboa Vadia. Bye bye Barcelona is the documentary outburst of Eduardo Chibás on mass tourism, where it is debated the relationship between the local life and tourists. Borned in Caracas, Venuzuela, Chibás assumes that he never met the Ramblas of people from Barcelona. He lives, however, long enough to feel the negative impacts of touristification of which is the 4th most visited city in Europe, after London, Rome and Paris, and the leader in the number of cruises that receives from the continent and the Mediterranean. This phenomenon has greatly affected the dwindling number of residents of the center of a city increasingly expensive. Many of the approximately 30,000 tourists who arrive daily in cruises in the city of Barcelona do not see how […]

Free Cinema: “Bye bye Barcelona” I Cine Café Touristification

 [article written by Leonor Duarte, Sara Aranha and Joana Dias] In the past 15th march, at Lisboa Vadia, there was an other debate about touristification in Lisbon, after the film Cidade Guiada (Guided City), a documentary produced by Catarina Leal. It was a night full of ideas, with the presence of the producer Catarina Leal, the researcher and professor Joãp Seixas and Joana Jacinto, founder of the Lisbon Sustainable Tourism project. With them, we protest, we discuss ideas and concerns, but we also sought solutions to a phenomenon that has affected all of us.   How do we pay 2€ for a glass of wine that is not even a big deal?   There were many questions and criticism. It was a powerful moment, where we heard people of all ages, from traders to students and artists, portuguese and foreigners. Many were the criticisms and questions. It was a powerful moment_ […]

Is there life after tourism?

Produced by Catarina Leal in her Master’s degree developed in Anthropology, Cidade Guiada documents one of the biggest problems currently encountered in the historic centre of Lisbon: gentrification by tourism. Phenomenon long observed in cities such as Barcelona, Berlin or London, gentrification is an urban symptom which mainly affects the most vulnerable populations inhabiting cities. Tourism is one of the key features adopted to boost the economy in neighbourhoods such as Graça, Alfama and Mouraria. With an increasingly industry sustained on foreign population, Portuguese neighbourhoods are revaluated and rehabilitated every day. Already with a few former residents, from the buildings only facades are left.   Cidade Guiada still poses an increasingly relevant question: how to redevelop a neighbourhood or a city that serves the people and not the tourists?   The film projection will be followed by a debate with the presence of director Catarina Leal, Joana Jacinto, promoter of […]

FREE CINEMA: “Cidade Guiada” (“Guided City”) I Cine Café Touristification

 April 15 – 22 I Mouraria, Lisbon   The project “Tourism Gentrification and City-making” is promoted by Stadslab (Fontys – University of Applied Sciences, Tilburg, NL), in partnership with Academia Cidadã.   The objectives of the Master Class are: – to provide insight into the impact of mass tourism on public space, urban development and the daily urban life of the citizens in Lisbon; – to develop alternative scenarios for a more balanced urban development to avoid excessive real estate speculation, social and economic segregation, lack of accessible urban services and public space and disappearance of affordable housing. The intervention area of the Master Class will be the district of Mouraria.   For more information and application, please enter here.

Master Class “Tourism Gentrification and City-making”