Pushed to Lisbon's periphery

摘要

Last year, the council of Oeiras, in Lisbon, Portugal, sold a plot of land to a Chinese company for €14.5 million. The price and the nature of the sale it's thought the company will build housing on the site - reflect the effectiveness with which Portugal has been marketed in recent years as an attractive destination for both real-estate speculation and tourism. Perhaps unbeknown to its buyers, however, this plot of land was, until not long ago, home to Pedreira dos Hungaros, one of Portugal's largest self-built neighbourhoods, housing some three thousand people over two decades. One of the early targets of the Dedicated National Rehousing Plan, the PER (Programa Especial de Realojamento), which began in 1994 and is still running today, the televised demolition of its homes and subsequent rehousing of its residents was considered a success - by the standards of the programme. Yet, to listen to those who lived through it - whose homes were demolished so that they could be moved to housing estates all over the peripheries - is to be confronted with a complex history and set of relations that challenge assumptions about 'informal' housing, 'quality of life' and the qualities of the built environment. Such voices, however, are frequently drowned out by more powerful narrators in these processes.