Why Investment in Lisbon is high risk

Lisbon city council has recently announced many plans to revitalize the city in many areas such as Alcantara and Baixa Chiado. They reached international fame recently when politician José Sá Fernandes was hailed as a fighter against corruption by Al Jazeera.

Unfortunately, although the corruption might have been fought, there is little momentum to finish projects that were started 20 years ago. It would seem that the game is to get money into Lisbon and then quietly pretend all is normal when the plans fall through.

In 1984, prominent politicians made a case for re urbanization of the Northern limit of the City in a bold plan to extend the main axis of the city. The project has gone ahead and now 6% of Lisbon’s residents live there. Sadly they live in an unfinished project. Promised infrastructure has not been delivered, new building has been endlessly delayed and even simple pavements to metro stations are left unfinished as evidenced by the local offices for the PS, who alerted the council, and only received a response six months later- the response being that it is behind due to bureaucratic difficulties.

Now it is here that lies the core of the problem. The council took six months to reply to local queries about an unfinished pavement. Surely a simple solution for a pavement can be found. The problem was of a bureaucratic nature. Alta de Lisboa has many projects on a far larger scale and most of them are stopped for the very same reason. Alta de Lisboa is built largely on old squatter lands and farms.

This week’s Lisbon edition of Time Out had as a cover story, Lisbon in 2021. In the opening pages of the article Manuel Salgado, Lisbon’s Architect in charge of urbanization, made enough claims to fill two pages. Let me give you an outline : Baixa Chiado will be completely rehabilitated (in 10 years) There won’t be cars but bicycles, there will be lifts built up to the castle. Cais Sodre will have a new Marina, housing and commerce covering 50 thousand square metres, alongside new Cruise ship terminals. Alcantara will have new underground train connections and a new project of reurbanization. Belem and Pedroçous will also undergo a dramatic change. Avenida Liberdade will be pedestrainised (or at least that is what he dreams) and Parque Mayer will magically revitalise the whole area. Avenida Republica will have many more trees, Campo Grande will be extended to Campo Pequeno and the traffic will run in tunnels underneath. Do I need to go on? Well, I shall, but just to mention that Alta de Lisboa was mentioned very briefly, as currently being the back of the city, however it would be very different in 20 years’ time (that will be 45 years after the projects conception). Does one need to look any further for signs?

This is a council who cannot finish a pavement in a project area due to bureaucracies? Lisbon needs to sort out its internal problems first then finish some of the projects it has already started. Then there would be some credibility in the claims. How can any one of these projects ever be finished? In Alta de Lisboa the road that runs round the North to East to the South and then links with Campo Grande was supposed to be finished in 2004. Just last month the council announced that the project which had taken years to negotiate would be re-evaluated and subject to further study for a different solution. So how can the new council really believe they can do all these other projects? The only answer can be that they don’t. They need your money.

The Lisbon council and its current team are creating an incredible dream… really, really in-credible.

Action - Av. Santos e Castro - CML’s Reminder

Here is a quick video to remind all involved in CML NOT TO FORGET US:

Many Thanks to ViverAltadeLisboa for their hard work (and some pictures -  ).