In-between spaces : a configurational history of gated enclaves in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area

Abstract

This study examines the development of gated enclaves in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (AML) in order to evaluate the relationships between socio-urban segregation and spatial confguration in contemporary urbanities. It assumes that social segregation is an inherent characteristic of cities since ancient times, proposes that this characteristic has a geometric confguration, both social and spatial, and endeavours to determine how this confguration functions at the local and metropolitan level. As such, the project applies a three-pronged multiparadigm approach into building a spatial theory of socio-urban fragmentation through theoretical research into the immaterial condition of urban segregationist thought, a historical survey on the development of gated enclaves, and a morphological and confgurational analysis into socio-spatial division through cartographic and aerial surveys of gated enclaves in the AML from the XII to XXI centuries. It posits that we are currently witnessing the beginning of a New Age of Confnement, requiring a thorough understanding of liminal spaces, and in so doing, lay the foundations for a confgurational theory of auto-poietic socio-urban segregation. Through a series of fndings on the synergetic behaviour of enclaves within the metropolitan network, we establish a correlation between culs-de-sac, and a complex yet contradictory relation between choice and integration in local and global networks of gated enclaves, paving the way for a reinterpretation of the origins and growth of urban agglomerations and concluding with the suggested hypothesis of self-segregation frst, integration later.