Tackling urban disparities through participatory culture-led urban regeneration. Insights from Lisbon

In the last few decades, the diffusion of culture-led urban regeneration schemes has intercepted the growth of participatory approaches across a wide range of policy domains. Partnerships between private and public agencies have sought, accordingly, the engagement of citizens and stakeholders to push forward context-specific interventions. From the participatory action research developed in Lisbon, one of the cities funded under the EU-funded project ROCK, we analyse the ways in which this project has tackled spatial divides and socioeconomic inequalities in the project demonstration area. Our main argument is that operational decisions and substantive mismatches have given rise to opportunities and bottlenecks throughout the implementation of the project. While the public investment has been directed to regenerate a deprived area, it has fallen short of promoting greater connections within the area and with the surrounding neighbourhoods. ROCK’s actions have only partially met local community expectations regarding the project’s objectives for the optimisation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, with impacts over degrees of citizen engagement in the local Living Lab.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Avaliação e Monitorização do projeto “Sê Bairrista”. Relatório final

Este relatório visa partilhar os resultados do trabalho de monitorização e avaliação, desenvolvido pela equipa de investigação do Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-ULisboa) no âmbito do projeto “Sê Bairrista”. Em particular, dos dados resultantes da aplicação de 200 inquéritos de avaliação (pré e pós projeto) e das notas recolhidas através do trabalho de monitorização (observação participante) em 138 iniciativas do projeto. Com este trabalho pretende-se dar conta do impacto das iniciativas levadas a cabo pelo projecto “Sê Bairrista” no aumento de coesão social e sentimento de pertença ao território e ao grupo” dos moradores dos bairros do 4 Crescente (Alfinetes, Salgadas, Quinta do Marquês de Abrantes e Quinta do Chalé) na freguesia de Marvila (Lisboa). Nomeadamente, as melhorias na relação com o “espaço circundante” - tanto com o contexto físico habitado, como o espaço e equipamentos públicos - e, também, com o “contexto social”, ou seja, as relações sociais e afetivas que estabelecem com os outros habitantes (vizinhos) deste território.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Justice and power relations in urban greening: can Lisbon’s urban greening strategies lead to more environmental justice?

As urban greening has become a prevalent tool in the context of global climate governance, this paper examines Lisbon’s greening strategies in the context of its election as European Green Capital 2020. While applying an analytical framework based on environmental justice, we perform a cross-analysis of the city-wide greening strategies, together with a peculiar and unusual planning process for a new green space in the neighbourhood of Marvila. Based on qualitative research carried out in-situ, we argue that Lisbon’s greening strategies are based on a discourse of ecological benefits, without aiming to ensure access to green space for different population groups. Procedural justice concerns are widely undervalued, resulting in limited space available for community involvement. We show how urban greening is essentially a multiscalar exercise, impacted by and affecting multiple scales simultaneously. Hence procedural justice deserves a much more prominent role in urban greening, as participation and recognition can give local communities the opportunity to adapt global urban agendas toward their particular needs and desires. Our findings lead us to conclude that environmental justice is ultimately an exercise of multiscalar governance, where local decision-making needs to attend to contextual challenges but also to a long-term sustainability vision at a larger scale

Multi-Scale Intersections of Collaborative Collective Actions in Urban Regeneration: Insights from the ROCK project in Lisbon

Collective collaboration between NGOs, associated and non-associated agents can capitalise knowledge, experience and expertise in initiatives for social change. This contribution focusses on forms of citizen engagement funded by international and local agencies for urban regeneration. Focus on the city of Lisbon allows to shed light on the multi-scale intersections between the international project “ROCK - Regeneration and Optimisation of Cultural heritage in creative and Knowledge cities” funded by the European Commission, and the programme for urban regeneration “BIPZIP - Bairros de Intervenção Prioritária Zonas de Intervenção Prioritária” promoted by the municipality of Lisbon. The international project and the local programme aim to engage foster collective collaborative actions for urban regeneration, with cultural heritage as the main driver in the ROCK project and socio-territorial cohesion as the core issue in the BIPZIP programme. Zooming in on the specific urban area of intervention between Marvila and Beato neighbourhoods, this contribution retrieves some inputs from the empirical knowledge collected within the ongoing research conducted by the authors in Lisbon. We argue that the lack of an integrated management between the project and the programme can be considered as emerging burdens due to limited multi-scale intersections between the project and the programme.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Bibliogammers Report. 11-17 Março 2019 Report. Document produced for the Horizon 2020 project ‘ROCK’

Bibliogamers 2019 was an event that aimed to promote information and knowledge about the history and heritage of the Marvila territory through a series of educational activities related to the conception and programming of videogames. The majority of the initiatives took place in the Marvila Library, with some special seminars directed particularly to media and technology students at the nearby D. Dínis secondary school. All of the activities were free and most of them were open to the wider public. Only some workshops and the Game Jam required the inscription of the participants.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio