Urban gardening and post-austerity in Lisbon

Abstract

Post-austerity politics in Portugal aim to minimise the impact of austerity measures imposed after the 2011 sovereign debt crisis through strict financial discipline, a capital-oriented reordering of urban space, and labour precaritisation. In the capital, Lisbon, post-austerity urbanism includes a real estate boom related to tourism, golden visas, and tax cuts for high-net-worth individuals, resulting in a rapid reconfiguration and gentrification of the historical centre. In parallel, the municipal government has incentivized ‘sharing economy’ companies directed at tourists. Environmentalism has been deployed as benign justification for these new policies, signalled by the award of 2020 Green Capital of Europe. In this chapter we explore how these processes interact with the long history of urban gardening across the city. The varying trajectories of Lisbon’s gardening spaces demonstrate the continuities between urban austerity and the post-austerity moment. We explore the dynamics of and relations between subaltern urbanism and the emergence of autonomous gardening spaces on the one hand, and the state erasure, overwriting, or construction of green gentrification on the other. While showing that urban gardening forges counter-hegemonic spaces of varying persistence, we also demonstrate the ways through which gardening has been closely entwined with processes of post-austerity and state discipline.