Estevão Portela-Pereira

University of Lisbon | UL · Center of Geographic Studies (CEGUL)

The experience of contemporary urbanity is inescapably marked by the presence of abandonment, ruination and emptiness. Ruins, abandoned buildings and vacant lands are ubiquitous presences in contemporary cities. In Portugal, the model of urban development in the past decades, driven by real estate speculation, led to discontinuous city growth, leaving many vacant lots. With the real estate market crisis, these vacant lands tend to last. On the other hand, new forms of modern ruins have been added to the historic ruins becoming a part of the cityscape: abandoned manufacturing plants, closed cinemas, derelict barracks, dead malls, unfinished real estate projects, etc. These elements are usually seen in a negative way. The ruined city is one of the strongest dystopias of late modernity, with great expression in visual culture (photography, sci-fi movies, comics, electronic games, etc.). Ruins and vacant lands are equated with emptiness, death and disorder. Urban planning has followed this hegemonic sensitivity that demonizes ruins and vacant lands: revitalization of historic centres, regeneration of old industrial areas and urban re-densification strategies in order to rehabilitate the compact city, all have become priorities for the urban policies in the past few decades; an intense desire for erasing ruins and occupying vacant lands is present in all of them. Since the focus has been put in reversing urban ruins and derelicts, little attention has been devoted to the analysis and understanding of the ruination processes and to study of the morphology and abilities of those spaces, namely in Portugal. The Project NoVOID aims to fill this gap.