The contemporary geographies of urban inequality: insights from Portugal and the Lisbon Metropolitan Area

Abstract

This chapter explores the problematics of contemporary urban inequality in Portugal, assuming a spatial reading where segregation plays a didactic role. The Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA) constitutes the empirical case that is framed in a brief analysis of the recent evolution of inequalities, underlining income in relation with other dimensions. The issue of inequality has become a focal point in academic and political discourse. Stiglitz or Piketty have highlighted the widening income gap and its societal repercussions, showing how neoliberalism has amplified inequality by reducing regulation, increased financialization and promoted the concentration of wealth. Within this context, urban areas emerge as the most unequal spaces, with housing expulsions and spatial segregation being the major expressions of this inequality. In Portugal, income inequality remains high, despite the reduction observed along the twenty-first century. Urban regions, particularly Lisbon and Porto, display the highest inequality levels. From a geographical perspective, urban inequality in the LMA reflect socioeconomic changes, particularly in labour and housing markets, that experienced liberalization, internationalization and a huge increase in prices. Though we find a trend towards spatial desegregation, city divisions are not reducing, with top earners and EU migrants concentrating in central Lisbon and its affluent and lower-income groups and non-EU migrants pushed to suburbia with lower accessibility and limited urban resources.