Public urban space and territorial dynamics: miradouro de Santa Catarina, Lisbon

Abstract

In recent decades, Lisbon has undergone profound physical, functional, cultural and social transformations, from which new territorial dynamics have emerged, with significant impacts on the use and appropriation of public urban space. Drawing on the case study of miradouro de Santa Catarina, this article analyses how processes of gentrification, commodification, privatisation and touristification materialise in this specific space. The article seeks to understand how these dynamics are expressed in public space, the role of urban planning and management policies in Lisbon’s historic centre and their effects on accessibility, coexistence and conflict. It concludes that these transformations result largely from urban policies oriented towards the regeneration of the consolidated urban fabric, associated with rising property values and the intensification of tourist activity. Miradouro de Santa Catarina thus highlights the growing integration of public spaces into logics of marketisation and control, as well as processes of informal privatisation, calling into question their social function as open, inclusive and plural spaces, and establishing itself as a privileged observatory of contemporary territorial dynamics in Lisbon’s historic centre.