Postmodernism helps us better understand the social relationships in Lisbon through, and after, its Gentrification process.

 

 

From Coelho M; City Making & Tourism Gentrification Lisbon 2016

 

 

In Lisbon the rise of tourism coincides with a slow recovery after the deep economic crisis that started in 2008. First, rigorous austerity measures – often forced upon Portugal by international institutions such as IMF and ECB – pushed many people into unemployment and poverty and made them look for alternative means of securing an income.

 

..economic factors together with the rise of tourism have resulted in a virulent cock- tail with a huge impact on the city of Lisbon.

 

Escalating rents have pushed out the poor people and immigrants, so that the tourist attractions, restaurants, entertainment bars and shops for visitors and tourists now dominate much of the central districts.

 

Tuk-tuk cars ride the streets of Lisbon, providing sightseeing toursfor tourists. In 3 years the business has grown to 600 vehicles. Apart from the business providers and drivers, the local peopledon’t have a direct benefit from the service, but have to bear the noise and presence of vehicles in streets.

 

Historically, the traditional center of Lisbon has been home to diverse groups of people. Over the past ten years especially, however, the property values has increased. This, coupled with the economic crisis, the financial austerity and the new law of urban rental (bulwark of a neoliberal turn in legal and urban policy frame) legitimized the “tourism panacea” in the city center.

 

 

 

From Mendes, L. (2011) – “Postmodern city, gentrification and the social production of fragmented space”, Cidades...

 

 

Gentrification is a term that has come to refer to the movement of affluent, usually young, middle-class residents into run-down inner-city areas. The effect is that these areas become socially, economically and environmentally up-graded. It’s a process of socio-spatial change where the rehabilitation of residential property in a working- class neighbourhood by relatively affluent incomers leads to the displacement of former residents unable to afford the increased costs of housing that accompany regeneration (Pacione, 2001)

 

 

The concept of post-modernity has been invoked to describe the developments occurring in a certain number of areas such as architecture, art, literature, the cinema, music, fashion, communication, the experiences of space and time.

The Bairro Alto, in the city of Lisbon, though repository of rooted and ancient cultural manifestations and traditions, has been facing deep changes in its social fabric with the arrival of new residents who have a particular lifestyle and who produce a particular and reticular social appropriation of the space-neighbourhood.

The image of its streets is built in a great variety of detail that belongs to different architectural responses resulting from long-lasting sedimentations and from corresponding stylistic evolutions.

Postmodern architects sought to introduce variations in building surface, shape and size, with much of this variation being derived from sticking together elements of different styles, to create a ‘pastiche’.

 

 

 

 

Marxism

 

This article coincides with Karl Marx notions on Culture, which he categorized within a ‘superstructure’. This superstructure is set up to hide the exploitation that happens within the corporate world, thus Marx saw culture as something that creates false consciousness with distorted perceptions of social society.

 

 

 

From Authoritarian Legacies, Transitional Justice and State Crisis in Portugal’s Democratization

António Costa Pinto

 

 

1976, when a new constitution was approved and the first legislative and presidential elections were held.

 

While the great majority of the Portuguese people believe, irrespective of their age, that the consequences of the ‘revolution’ were more positive than they were negative, supporters of the CDS-PP are more inclined to disagree with this sentiment.

 

(CDS-PP Centro Democrático Social-Partido Popular)

 

…62 per cent of CDS-PP supporters characterized the New State as being just as positive as it was negative.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Culture

 

 

‘cultural intermediaries’, a new social group which carries out scientific, cultural and technical work related to education, professional training and to the academic world. In the case of Bairro Alto, this group is also visible, as approximately 30% of the new residential population in the neighbourhood belongs to the scientific, technical, artistic and similar professions.

They are the cultural intermediaries linked to the cultural industries, the arts, publicity, design, fashion, culture, image-making and marketing, architecture and decorating, among others.

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