City Of Lisbon Research Articles

El terremoto de Lisboa de 1755 desde la española villa de Herencia: las endechas endecasilábicas de Benegasi y Luján

The earthquake that shook the Iberian Peninsula in 1755, whose epicenter was near the city of Lisbon, which was totally destroyed by its consequences, gave rise to a large literary corpus both in Spain and in Portugal. This article edits and analyzes one of these productions, the Descripción del terremoto según se experimentó en la villa de Herencia el día 1 de noviembre de este año de 1755 a las diez del día, compuesto a impulsos del desengaño, para el mayor escarmiento, por don José Benegasi y Luján. The conjunctural character of the text responded to the demands of a public eager for news, but also happy with the possibility of enjoying the details of the tragedy. Many authors were able to see in this circumstance a true publishing vein. Although the literary texts coexist with others of a political and/or bureaucratic nature that deal with the catastrophe, in the former a feeling of surprise combined with a unanimous resolution will prevail: the assumption of guilt in the face of divine wrath. There will be few texts that deviate from this line, despite the fact that, as is known, the fateful event shook the pillars of the Christian faith.

Screening walkability violations through self-reported claims by smartphone detection: The case of Lisbon, Portugal

A smartphone app was developed for the citizens to self-report incidents in the city of Lisbon and to supervise its process of resolving the problem. There are many areas that people can report on, however, this article focuses on exploring data related to “sidewalk and accessibility”. The aim of this paper is to elaborate a methodology for simplifying large datasets and guide policymakers in resolving the problems reported. An example of the proposed methodology is used in “sidewalk and accessibility” occurrences to evaluate where and what are the main concerns of citizens regarding this aspect in the city. The methodology proposed in this paper provides insight for local authorities to elaborate urban strategies and policies in favor of resolving the claims and ensuring in this case, a more walkable city.

'It was Pessoa that was consuming us': On Lisbon and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

'It was Pessoa that was consuming us':On Lisbon and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis Jerónimo Pizarro Abstract One of José Saramago's most celebrated books, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984), owes its celebrity, in part, to the dialogue established with Fernando Pessoa, through the figure of the classic heteronym Ricardo Reis, whose biography is silent about the date of his death. What is lacking in many comparative studies between Pessoa and Saramago is a return to the genesis of the 1984 novel, which was written after the great impact that, in the future Portuguese Nobel, the reading of The Book of Disquiet (1982) had. This article is dedicated to discussing the place of Pessoa, and of The Book of Disquiet in particular, in Saramago's work, based on a critical and archival research of materials related to The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Resumo Um dos livros mais celebrados de José Saramago, O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis (1984), deve, em parte, a sua celebridade ao diálogo estabelecido com Fernando Pessoa, através da figura do heterónimo clássico Ricardo Reis, cuja biografia é omissa relativamente à data da sua morte. O que falta em muitos estudos de índole comparatista entre Pessoa e Saramago é um regresso à génese do romance de 1984, que foi escrito depois do grande impacto que a leitura do Livro do Desassossego (1982) teve no futuro Nobel português. Este artigo dedica-se a discutir o lugar de Pessoa e, em particular, do Livro, na obra saramaguiana, partido de uma pesquisa crítica e arquivística dos materiais referentes a O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis. Keywords Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago, Portuguese literature, literary archives, novel, The Book of Disquiet, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis Palavras-chave Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago, literatura portuguesa, arquivos literários, romance, Livro do Desassossego, O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis was published in 1984, just after José Saramago had read the most remarkable book by Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, released in 1982, almost fifty years after the death of Pessoa. I believe that Saramago, whose consecration was recent (in this regard, it is worth mentioning the glorious sequence of Manual of Painting and Calligraphy, 1977, Raised from the Ground, 1980, and Baltasar and Blimunda, 1982), when he read this book, was shaken to the core. Suddenly, the writer born in Azinhaga do Ribatejo would have understood that the writer born in Lisbon was much more than a poet. In that posthumous Book, Pessoa was looking to assert himself as a new emperor of the Portuguese language, like Father António Vieira whom Pessoa honoured as such,1 not without dreaming that the same epithet could one day apply to himself, making him a Super-Vieira.2 In the end, Pessoa wanted The Book to be the product of the unexpected conjunction of at least two titular figures, Vieira and Verlaine,3 and for those that rushed to place Pessoa as a poet, The Book would reveal a writer of prose, and a great writer of prose at that. I imagine that after reading The Book of Disquiet, Saramago, who admired Pessoa, would have exclaimed: 'but wait, it wasn't enough to be a poet, or better, four poets? There was also Bernardo Soares?' Naturally, this is just speculation, but it is important to note that after Saramago read The Book he did not write The Year of the Death of Bernardo Soares, or make big references to the bookkeeper of the city of Lisbon. Instead, he rescued Ricardo Reis (whom he had read when he was young and for whom he developed an unambiguous fascination) and wanted to write his book about Lisbon, as someone who did not want, literarily, to lose a city. [End Page 78] Let us remember that the Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is to a certain extent an Italian book, containing this celebrated phrase: 'for my part, I can say that I shall always visit Italy in a state of total submission, on my...

Sense of place and the city: the case of non-native residents in Lisbon

When immigrants move to a new city, they tend to develop distinct relationships with the urban landscape, which in turn becomes the new setting of their routine-based activities that evolve over time. Previous works in environmental psychology have quantitatively examined non-native residents' development of sense of place towards their new environment. In this paper, we introduce the spatial perspective into studying the sense of place experienced by non-natives in an urban context. We study the person-place bonds, relationships, and feelings cultivated by non-native residents living in the city of Lisbon (Portugal) through an online map-based survey. Then, we carried out spatial analysis aimed at distinguishing and visualizing the different facets of sense of place developed by two participant groups: short-term residents and long-term residents. Results showed that while short-term residents reported bonds with places, long-term residents' senses of place were more intense and broader throughout the city. The correlations, associations, and relationships between participant groups and the dimensions of sense of place allowed us to observe features and patterns that were previously described in the literature, although adding the spatial lenses can potentially provide better insights for urban planning, community development, and inclusive policies.

Integrative analysis of multimodal traffic data: addressing open challenges using big data analytics in the city of Lisbon

Worldwide cities are establishing efforts to collect urban traffic data from various modes and sources. Integrating traffic data, together with their situational context, offers more comprehensive views on the ongoing mobility changes and supports enhanced management decisions accordingly. Hence, cities are becoming sensorized and heterogeneous sources of urban data are being consolidated with the aim of monitoring multimodal traffic patterns, encompassing all major transport modes—road, railway, inland waterway—, and active transport modes such as walking and cycling. The research reported in this paper aims at bridging the existing literature gap on the integrative analysis of multimodal traffic data and its situational urban context. The reported work is anchored on the major findings and contributions from the research and innovation project Integrative Learning from Urban Data and Situational Context for City Mobility Optimization (ILU), a multi-disciplinary project on the field of artificial intelligence applied to urban mobility, joining the Lisbon city Council, public carriers, and national research institutes. The manuscript is focused on the context-aware analysis of multimodal traffic data with a focus on public transportation, offering four major contributions. First, it provides a structured view on the scientific and technical challenges and opportunities for data-centric multimodal mobility decisions. Second, rooted on existing literature and empirical evidence, we outline principles for the context-aware discovery of multimodal patterns from heterogeneous sources of urban data. Third, Lisbon is introduced as a case study to show how these principles can be enacted in practice, together with some essential findings. Finally, we instantiate some principles by conducting a spatiotemporal analysis of multimodality indices in the city against available context. Concluding, this work offers a structured view on the opportunities offered by cross-modal and context-enriched analysis of traffic data, motivating the role of Big Data to support more transparent and inclusive mobility planning decisions, promote coordination among public transport operators, and dynamically align transport supply with the emerging urban traffic dynamics.

On how to incorporate public sources of situational context in descriptive and predictive models of traffic data

BackgroundEuropean cities are placing a larger emphasis on urban data consolidation and analysis for optimizing public transport in response to changing urban mobility dynamics. Despite the existing efforts, traffic data analysis often disregards vital situational context, including large-scale events, weather factors, traffic generation poles, social distancing norms, or traffic interdictions. Some of these sources of context data are still private, dispersed, or unavailable for the purpose of planning or managing urban mobility. Addressing the above observation, the Lisbon city Council has already established efforts for gathering historic and prospective sources of situational context in standardized semi-structured repositories, triggering new opportunities for context-aware traffic data analysis.Research questionsThe work presented in this paper aims at tackling the following main research question: How to incorporate historical and prospective sources of situational context into descriptive and predictive models of urban traffic data?MethodologyWe propose a methodology anchored in data science methods to integrate situational context in the descriptive and predictive models of traffic data, with a focus on the three following major spatiotemporal traffic data structures: i) georeferenced time series data; ii) origin-destination tensor data; iii) raw traffic event data. Second, we introduce additional principles for the online consolidation and labelling of heterogeneous sources of situational context from public repositories. Third, we quantify the impact produced by situational context aspects on public passenger transport data gathered from smart card validations along the bus (CARRIS), subway (METRO) and bike sharing (GIRA) modes in the city of Lisbon.ResultsThe gathered results stress the importance of incorporating historical and prospective context data for a guided description and prediction of urban mobility dynamics, irrespective of the underlying data representation.Overall, the research offers the following major contributions:A novel methodology on how to acquire, consolidate and incorporate different sources of context for the context-enriched analysis of traffic data;The instantiation of the proposed methodology in the city of Lisbon, discussing the role of recent initiatives for the ongoing monitoring of relevant context data sources within semi-structured repositories, and further showing how these initiatives can be extended for the context-sensitive modelling of traffic data for descriptive and predictive ends;A roadmap of practical illustrations quantifying impact of different context factors (including weather, traffic interdictions and public events) on different transportation modes using different spatiotemporal traffic data structures; andA review of state-of-the-art contributions on context-enriched traffic data analysis.The contributions reported in this work are anchored in the empirical observations gathered along the first stage of the ILU project (see footnote 1), providing a study case of interest to be followed by other European cities.

Organized Immigrant Resources and Aspirations at the City Level of the Host Country – the Case of Casa do Brasil de Lisboa

This article looks at the Brazilian migrant association founded in 1992, functioning in the capital of Portugal, Casa do Brasil de Lisboa. Its origin is connected to the period of the first numerous stream of Brazilians coming to Portugal, the colonizer of their homeland in former times. Knowing that migrant networks are of great value to the process of immigrants’ integration into a host society – and a local community as well – Casa do Brasil de Lisboa is very active in this field. For instance, in partnership with the Lisbon City Council, this association offers guidance on the legalization of stay, and access to public and private services in Portugal. However, a large number of tasks undertaken by Casa do Brasil de Lisboa go far beyond this kind of guidance. Two editions of the project Migrante Participa (Migrant Participates) are a clear illustration of it. Each edition created opportunities to meet, gain knowledge, and share opinions on migratory process issues in the context of Portugal and Lisbon as well, encouraging political participation at the local level, for example. Casa do Brasil de Lisboa is also active in the field of culture, promoting Brazilian artists. What is more, this association is not closed for other nationalities and collaborates with various entities. To be more specific, therefore, the focus of this text is on presenting Casa do Brasil de Lisboa as a dynamic immigrant association working on increasing the level of integration and reducing the phenomenon of individual marginalization within the Lisbon community. As a theoretical framework of this text serves the concept of immigrants’ integration of Rinus Penninx.

The Cyberdivisions Produced by the Design of VGI under the Platform Economy: The Case of the Restaurant Sector in TripAdvisor

There is increasing concern regarding the inequalities produced by digital platforms based on volunteered geographic information (VGI). Several forms of inequalities have been observed, namely the unequal spatial coverage and the uneven levels of usage even in territories with good coverage. However, VGI platforms under the logic of platform economy have generated other forms of spatial inequality that require more attention. The cyberspace within VGI platforms is producing different cyberspatialities, especially with the platformisation processes that have made this type of inequality more evident. With this in mind, this paper aims to explore the making of cyberdivisions under the platform economy. We argue that the design of VGI within digital platforms is generating cyberdivisions in the urban economy. This research is particularly interested in exploring the restaurant sector in the TripAdvisor platform in the city of Lisbon. In this paper, we draw on a representative survey by questionnaire to restaurant firm owners. We obtained 385 responses out of a universe of 3453 restaurants. This sample provides a confidence level of 95% and a confidence interval of 5%. In addition, we webscraped data from TripAdvisor to assess its coverage in Lisbon. This study reveals that there are different forms of online presence and engagement which have generated cyberdivisions.

The Great Recession weighted on Portuguese children: A structural equation modeling approach considering eating patterns.

Further evidence on how the Great Recession was associated with childhood obesity is needed, particularly when the world is facing a new and severe economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explores: (1) the direct association of the 2008's economic crisis with eating patterns and body mass index (BMI), among children, independently of their socioeconomic status (SES), and (2) the indirect association between the crisis and children's BMI, by using eating patterns as mediators. A sample of children (n=8472, mean age: 7.17 years old, 50.8% male) was recruited in schools from the cities of Porto, Coimbra and Lisbon, Portugal. Children's height and weight were objectively measured; BMI was calculated. Other data were collected by a parental questionnaire. A structural equation modeling studied the associations between the economic crisis impact, eating patterns, and BMI; model was adjusted for SES. Children in families that reported a greater impact of the economic crisis showed higher consumption of unhealthy food items and lower consumption of healthy foods, regardless of SES. Indirectly, children whose parents scored higher in the economic crisis impact had higher BMI mediated by a higher consumption of cakes/chocolates and lower intake of vegetables/salads. The economic crisis was associated with higher BMI and unhealthy eating patterns. Efforts to promote healthy diets and weight are needed at a population level rather than for specific social classes, particularly in the face of a new economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Understanding the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Public Transportation Travel Patterns in the City of Lisbon

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is creating disruptive changes in urban mobility that may compromise the sustainability of the public transportation system. As a result, worldwide cities face the need to integrate data from different transportation modes to dynamically respond to changing conditions. This article combines statistical views with machine learning advances to comprehensively explore changing urban mobility dynamics within multimodal public transportation systems from user trip records. In particular, we retrieve discriminative traffic patterns with order-preserving coherence to model disruptions to demand expectations across geographies and show their utility to describe changing mobility dynamics with strict guarantees of statistical significance, interpretability and actionability. This methodology is applied to comprehensively trace the changes to the urban mobility patterns in the Lisbon city brought by the current COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we consider passenger trip data gathered from the three major public transportation modes: subway, bus, and tramways. The gathered results comprehensively reveal novel travel patterns within the city, such as imbalanced demand distribution towards the city peripheries, going far beyond simplistic localized changes to the magnitude of traffic demand. This work offers a novel methodological contribution with a solid statistical ground for the spatiotemporal assessment of actionable mobility changes and provides essential insights for other cities and public transport operators facing mobility challenges alike.

Green(er) Cities and Their Citizens: Insights from the Participatory Budget of Lisbon

There is rising scholarly and political interest in participatory budgets and their potential to advance urban sustainability. This article aims to contribute to this field of study through the specific lens of the city of Lisbon’s experience as an internationally acknowledged leader in participatory budgeting. To this end, the article critically examines the lessons and potential contribution of the Lisbon Participatory Budget through a multimethod approach. Emerging trends and variations of citizen proposals, projects, votes, and public funding are analysed in tandem with emerging key topics that show links and trade-offs between locally embedded participation and the international discourse on urban sustainability. Our analysis reveals three interconnected findings: first, the achievements of the Lisbon Participatory Budget show the potential to counteract the dominant engineered approach to urban sustainability; second, trends and variations of the achievements depend on both citizens’ voice and the significant influence of the city council through policymaking; and, third, the shift towards a thematic Green Participatory Budget in 2020 was not driven by consolidated social and political awareness on the achievements, suggesting that more could be achieved through the 2021 urban sustainability oriented Participatory Budget. We conclude recommending that this kind of analysis should be systematically carried out and disseminated within city council departments, promoting much needed internal awareness of PBs’ potential as drivers of urban sustainability. We also identify further research needed into the sustainability potential of green PBs.

O ferro como linguagem arquitetónica e urbana na cidade de Lisboa

Com a fundição da indústria com a arte no século XIX, surge o ferro fundido como processo crescente na construção e ornamentação das cidades. Este processo de industrialização foi determinante na difusão de características-tipo, suporte para a transformação da cidade com novas linguagens, formas e escalas. O objetivo deste estudo é construir uma síntese desenhada que caracterize o ferro como linguagem arquitetónica e urbana na cidade de Lisboa. O estudo pretende constituir-se como uma ferramenta gráfica representativa da aplicação deste material no tecido construído, definido por elementos de linguagem arquitetónica e elementos de linguagem de espaço público. Os elementos identificados procuram traduzir a diversidade, composição e repetição de situações presentes no universo de estudo, caracterizados textual e graficamente de forma comparável com desenhos síntese em escalas idênticas.

Comparing spatial and content analysis of residents and tourists using Geotagged Social Media Data. The Historic Neighbourhood of Alfama (Lisbon), a case study

Tourism flows to large cities have increased drastically in the past few years. The Alfama neighbourhood in Lisbon (Portugal) is facing major changes with respect to land uses, demographic features and social appropriation patterns in public spaces, caused by the intensification of tourism. The consequences of new emerging economic and symbolic values have rapidly given rise to a scenario of touristification and gentrification in the neighbourhood. In order to address such complexities, sustainable urban planning can benefit from real-time data sources that can represent the tourism flows in spatial and temporal perspectives. The research question allows Twitter to be used as an emerging data source and for analysing spatial patterns and content, based on two sample groups: residents and tourists, and their interpretations about the use of space for leisure activities. The research method is based on an analysis of two years of geotagged tweets in the city of Lisbon, differentiating between tourist and resident users, and, in a subsequent step, in the Alfama neighbourhood. The spatial distribution analysis and the content analysis have revealed not only spatio-temporal activity patterns but also emotional responses to new trends in urban tourism uses, consumption and perception of an increasing tourism pressure in Alfama. The results are relevant in the field of tourism and sustainable urban planning.

Transnational gentrification and the housing market during pandemic times, Lisbon style

In the decade between 2009 and 2019, the city of Lisbon was undeniably riding the crest of a wave of international projection as a tourist destination. Simultaneously, its housing market was acquir...

Smart Cities: Data-Driven Solutions to Understand Disruptive Problems in Transportation—The Lisbon Case Study

Transportation data in a smart city environment is increasingly becoming available. This data availability allows building smart solutions that are viewed as meaningful by both city residents and city management authorities. Our research work was based on Lisbon mobility data available through the local municipality, where we integrated and cleaned different data sources and applied a CRISP-DM approach using Python. We focused on mobility problems and interdependence and cascading-effect solutions for the city of Lisbon. We developed data-driven approaches using artificial intelligence and visualization methods to understand traffic and accident problems, providing a big picture to competent authorities and supporting the city in being more prepared, adaptable, and responsive, and better able to recover from such events.

Integrative Taxonomy Reveals That the Marine Brachyuran Crab Pyromaia tuberculata (Lockington, 1877) Reached Eastern Atlantic

Pyromaia tuberculata is native to the north-eastern Pacific Ocean and currently established in distant regions in the Pacific Ocean and southwest Atlantic. Outside its native range, this species has become established in organically polluted enclosed waters, such as bays. The Tagus estuary, with a broad shallow bay, is one of the largest estuaries in the west coast of Europe, located in western mainland Portugal, bordering the city of Lisbon. In this study, sediment samples were collected in the estuary between 2016 and 2017. Several adult specimens of P. tuberculata, including one ovigerous female, were morphologically and genetically identified, resulting in accurate identification of the species. The constant presence of adults over a 16-month sampling period suggests that the species has become established in the Tagus estuary. Moreover, their short life cycle, which allows for the production of at least two generations per year, with females reaching maturity within six months after settlement, favours population establishment. Despite being referred to as invasive, there are no records of adverse effects of P. tuberculata to the environment and socio-economy in regions outside its native range. However, due to its expanding ability, its inclusion in European monitoring programmes would indeed be desirable.

Disaster Management in Smart Cities

The smart city concept, in which data from different systems are available, contains a multitude of critical infrastructures. This data availability opens new research opportunities in the study of the interdependency between those critical infrastructures and cascading effects solutions and focuses on the smart city as a network of critical infrastructures. This paper proposes an integrated resilience system linking interconnected critical infrastructures in a smart city to improve disaster resilience. A data-driven approach is considered, using artificial intelligence and methods to minimize cascading effects and the destruction of failing critical infrastructures and their components (at a city level). The proposed approach allows rapid recovery of infrastructures’ service performance levels after disasters while keeping the coverage of the assessment of risks, prevention, detection, response, and mitigation of consequences. The proposed approach has the originality and the practical implication of providing a decision support system that handles the infrastructures that will support the city disaster management system—make the city prepare, adapt, absorb, respond, and recover from disasters by taking advantage of the interconnections between its various critical infrastructures to increase the overall resilience capacity. The city of Lisbon (Portugal) is used as a case to show the practical application of the approach.

Assessment of wireless charging impacts based on real-world driving patterns: Case study in Lisbon, Portugal

In the current transition to a smarter and more efficient transportation system, battery electric vehicle mileage and the time required for charging are still two main constraints that need to be overcome to enable a larger penetration of electric vehicles. Moreover, the few charging stations available are a consequence of the “supply and demand” problem. Consequently, wireless dynamic recharging can be a complementary solution to address the problems of light-duty electric mobility and an added-value towards autonomous vehicles. Consequently, this paper presents an innovative approach based on real world mobility patterns collected for a sample in the city of Lisbon, Portugal, to assess users’ electric vehicle feasibility by assessing different recharging scenarios, comparing stationary and dynamic recharging scenarios. The results indicate that at least 15 % more drivers would be eligible to own an electric vehicle if wireless charging was available. Moreover, wireless charging reduces the range of battery used, with stationary charging requiring circa 3.2 times more battery range. The developed approach confirms that wireless dynamic recharging can significantly change the framework of current electric mobility limitations, reducing range anxiety issues, contributing to redesign electric vehicle battery capacity and overcome barriers in stationary charging deployment and availability.

Study of Urban Heat Islands Using Different Urban Canopy Models and Identification Methods

This work aims to compare the performance of the single‑(SLUCM) and multilayer (BEP-Building effect parameterization) urban canopy models (UCMs) coupled with the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF), along with the application of two urban heat island (UHI) identification methods. The identification methods are: (1) the “classic method”, based on the temperature difference between urban and rural areas; (2) the “local method” based on the temperature difference at each urban location when the model land use is considered urban, and when it is replaced by the dominant rural land use category of the urban surroundings. The study is performed as a case study for the city of Lisbon, Portugal, during the record-breaking August 2003 heatwave event. Two main differences were found in the UHI intensity (UHII) and spatial distribution between the identification methods: a reduction by half in the UHII during nighttime when using the local method; and a dipole signal in the daytime and nighttime UHI spatial pattern when using the classic method, associated with the sheltering effect provided by the high topography in the northern part of the city, that reduces the advective cooling in the lower areas under prevalent northern wind conditions. These results highlight the importance of using the local method in UHI modeling studies to fully isolate urban canopy and regional geographic contributions to the UHII and distribution. Considerable improvements were obtained in the near‑surface temperature representation by coupling WRF with the UCMs but better with SLUCM. The nighttime UHII over the most densely urbanized areas is lower in BEP, which can be linked to its larger nocturnal turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) near the surface and negative sensible heat (SH) fluxes. The latter may be associated with the lower surface skin temperature found in BEP, possibly owing to larger turbulent SH fluxes near the surface. Due to its higher urban TKE, BEP significantly overestimates the planetary boundary layer height compared with SLUCM and observations from soundings. The comparison with a previous study for the city of Lisbon shows that BEP model simulation results heavily rely on the number and distribution of vertical levels within the urban canopy.

Heavy Metals Contamination of Urban Soils—A Decade Study in the City of Lisbon, Portugal

There is an intense and continuous growth of the world population living in cities. This increase in population means an increase in car traffic, an increase in new constructions and an increase in the production of waste that translates into an intensive use of land, particularly in terms of soil contaminants. Among other environmental contaminants, toxic metals, such as lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), nickel (Ni) and chromium (Cr) represent a public health problem. In this study the content of toxic metals in Lisbon’s (Portugal) soils was determined. The study was conducted over approximately a decade in six city locations, with a total of about 700 samples. Each site has different urban characteristics: traffic zone, residential area, urban park and mixed areas. The study allowed to verify the heterogeneity of metal content values in the city soils and their dependence on local traffic. Metal contents were determined by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy (GFAAS). For each site the geo-accumulation index, pollution factor, degree of contamination, pollution load index and ecological risk factor were calculated. The mean concentrations of Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb in soils were 0.463, 44.0, 46.6 and 5.73 mg/kg of dry soil, respectively. In the last year of the study the values were 0.417, 51.5, 62.4 and 8.49 mg/kg of dry soil, respectively. Cd and Ni exceeded the typical content values of these metals in the earth’s crust, indicating their anthropogenic origin. The correlation analysis revealed a significant correlation between Cr and Ni, Cd and Ni and Cd and Pb contents in the city soils. Regarding the results obtained in this long monitoring campaign, Lisbon’s soils can be considered as having low levels of pollution by these metals.