O mosaico lisboeta - A cidade resultante do processo de financeirização da habitação

Abstract

The city is fundamentally anchored in its housing function. This is what prevails in the structure of the built fabric and constitutes the main element of territorial cohesion. Embodying the ambiguity of being simultaneously a basic necessity and a financial asset, housing, despite being a constitutional right, has historically been viewed in Portugal as a market problem, with the State renouncing its responsibility as a provider in this area. The prevalence of a globalised and financialised economic model has fostered the commodification of housing, allowing global investors to enter real estate markets once designed for local demand. The impact of this transformation has been widely discussed in various fields, but its architectural repercussions lack detailed analysis. Lisbon is an interesting case study in this field, due to its late entry into the international market and the advanced state of degradation of a substantial portion of its building stock. The confluence of endogenous and exogenous factors observed in the second decade of this century generated enormous financial gains via the real estate market.This research, using an analytical and interpretative approach, aims to study the morphological and spatial impacts, specifically the architectural and urban changes resulting from the process of housing financialisation in the city of Lisbon between 2008 and 2021. To this end, the work is structured in two distinct parts: the first comprises an extensive theoretical, historical, and analytical framework that addresses the phenomenon of housing financialisation from different perspectives; the second critically analyses the repercussions of this phenomenon at different levels, from the macro to the micro scale. Through the construction of an extensive database that maps housing promoted by the private sector aimed at a high-end market segment, urban, political, and typological interpretations are extracted and case studies of the architectural typologies resulting from this intense financial pressure are dissected.