La pauvreté urbaine dans la région de Lisbonne.

Abstract

Urban Poverty in the Lisbon Metropolitan Region. After looking at the concepts of poverty and exclusion, the habitat of the urban poor in greater Lisbon, mainly the shanties, are analysed. Their spatial pattern shows an opposition between the central city (in which still 51% of the shanties remain) and the suburban fringe because of their trend to locate in quite central places and the diffusion process of those settlements in time. In the city differences are found between the better off western neighbourhoods and those located in the East and the North. Nowadays the processes of land valorisation and devaluation are enabling the formation of a more complex pattern of enclaves of poverty and exclusion. The importance of the shanties comes from structural components of the Portuguese economic development policy and consequently from the strong migration from rural areas after 1945. At present, the migrants are mainly from Africa, India and Pakistan. Thus the poverty enclaves are becoming ethnic ghettos or pluricultural places.