CONTESTED MODERNITIES. POLITICS, CULTURE AND URBANISATION IN PORTUGAL
in Ethnologia EuropaeaSearch for other papers by Eva Maria Blum in
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The article analyses a long-term conflict centred on an abandoned shipyard situated across the Tagus from the historical city centre of Lisbon. Since 1999, ambitious plans to build high-rise office towers and luxury apartments on the deserted site polarized politics and public opinion in the area, and local struggles about what to do with this former industrial waterfront became a catalyst for debates that reverberated through the entire country, throwing into sharp relief conflicting cultures of modernity that compete for hegemony in Portuguese society. In our study that spans the years 1999–2007, we consider urban planning and the political controversies spawned by urbanist interventions as a privileged site for the investigation of the cultural construction of modernities.