ANNUAL CONGRESS 2025

Between invisibility and overexposure: pocket-spaces as mitigators of the effects brought by the touristic industry. Lisbon's case.

Not scheduled

20m

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Poster Track 17 | PUBLIC SPACE

Speaker

Catarina Todorovic Caldeira (Faculty of Architecture, Lisbon University)

Description

The globalised and capitalised world thrives and, associated with phenomena of massive tourism and gentrification, cities and their inhabitants face an inevitable pressure to adjust. In this paper, we intend to explore the role and potential of pocket spaces – often neglected and apparently trivial spaces – within consolidated urban fabrics as possible mitigators of the effects brought by the touristic industry. We propose a framework based on the morphologic and topological relationships these spaces establish with what we call overexposed public space, which we associate with space that is being consumed by tourism and gentrification. These pocket spaces, characterised by their invisibility, may provide opportunities for local communities to resist displacement – namely when they are occupied. Following that, we argue that there is an increasing need for secrecy and intimacy in the city, especially in the context of urban areas suffering from massive tourism and gentrification or, in other words, from overexposure.
This research is based on the specific context of Lisbon’s historic-urban centre, which, apart from being frail due to the consequences of massive tourism and gentrification, is composed by several different morphological areas. The analysis and comparison between these different consolidated morphologies brings us to reflect on how the city was and is being inhabited, in the context of the above-mentioned criteria: between the two extremes of invisibility and overexposure.

References

Alexander, Christopher (1965) A City is not a Tree.
Han, Byung-Chul (2014) A Sociedade da Transparência. Relógio d'Água Editores.
Kimmel, L. (2021) Architecture of threshold spaces: a critique of the ideologies of hyperconnectivity and segregation in the socio-political context. Routledge.
Lippolis, L. (2016) Viagem aos Confins da Cidade. 1ª ed. Antígona Editores Refractários.
Sennett, Richard (2018) Building and Ethics for the City. Penguin.
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