Lisbon between touristification and the right to housing
In a yore silent alley of a historic city, today the wheels of the bags, the tilint of instagramble cookies and the voices of tourists of all tongues. It is the sound of touristification, a phenomenon that, like a river that overflows, floods whole neighborhoods with the promise of development, while pushing old residents for increasingly distant margins.
Touristification is the process in which urban areas are mostly shaped to attract and accommodate tourists. With it come the advantages – dynamization of the local economy, heritage revitalization, international projection. But there are also shadows, especially when we walk side by side with your almost inseparable sister: gentrification.
Gentrification is quieter, almost elegant at first glance. It brings author cafes, restored facades, carefully placed urban art. However, as the neighborhoods ‘get better’, prices shoot, landlords increase income and original residents, often with fewer resources, are forced to leave. The soul of the neighborhood, this, is in danger of being packed and sold as ‘authenticity’ simulated in any Airbnb campaign.
And this is where the contemporary dilemma arises: tourist accommodation vs Right to housing.
On the one hand, we have the al, a modern expression of hospitality that transforms homes into profits, a kind of micro popular capitalism, in which everyone can be entrepreneurs from their property. It is difficult to resist the temptation to convert an apartment into a seasonal income machine. After all, who would not want to earn in three days the equivalent of a month of conventional income?
On the other hand is the right to housing, enshrined in the Constitution, the Bases Law, in local plans and strategies, defended by social movements, desired by all who seek a ceiling not only to sleep, but to live, create roots and belong, finally, live.
Between 2009 and 2019, AL grew up in Lisbon and on average each year 42%. Between 2014 and 2018, AL grew at an annual rate of 100%, with special incidence in the parishes of the Historic Center, such as Mercy and Santa Maria Maior. In 2021, there were 19000 units of Al registered in the city, compared to 46 of 2009. This exponential growth had a significant impact on the real estate and social dynamics of the Historic Center, affecting significant portions of the tourist function: Alfama (60%of Al), Mericórdia (42%) and Santa Maria Maior (over 70%). For example, between 2014 and 2020, housing sales values increased 169.5% in central parishes, and rents rose 86.4% between 2010 and 2020.
The same logic of tourist unsustainability is found in the plane of the hotel industry. In 2009, there were 93 hotels in the city of Lisbon. After 10 years, the number of hotels has increased to 214, almost all to appear in the historic center.
Some cities are already trying to respond: limits to the number of local accommodation per neighborhood, tourist containment zones, accessible housing incentives. They are important but insufficient steps if there is no clear view: the city should not be a product or a showcase; It must be a space to be lived, appropriate, inhabited, with a social and functional mix.
Because, in the end, a city without residents is like a soulless house. Beautiful, maybe. But empty. And that should not interest the tourist economy either.
