Slum gentrification in Lisbon, Portugal: displacement and the imagined futures of an informal settlement

Abstract

When Lisbon is presented in touristic and official discourses, it is often the city’s post-imperial culture that comes to the forefront. The city and its monuments are associated with the history of its Navigators and with the Portuguese Empire, and many elements are presented as ‘remnants of empire’. The city centre contains different historical layers (such as a 13th-century Moor neighbourhood, elements of the 16th-century maritime world or late-18th-century rationalist urban design; see França, 2008) but the one thing linking five centuries of history together is the reference to empire. Heroic navigation, scientific expeditions, settlement colonialism and miscegenation, all are...