Dinámicas urbanas y turistificación en el barrio de alfama (lisboa): Una aproximación a los condicionantes históricos y políticos en el proceso de airbnbización

The Great Recession (2008-2014) and the consequent crisis of both national financial and production system have led the Portuguese administration to adopt tourism and urban rehabilitation as new pivotal sectors to overcome critical crisis-derived impacts on the economy and society. This has involved profound urban and social changes in the central historical quarters of Lisbon. In this sense, the historical quarter of Alfama in Lisbon has recently become the most important urban hotspot in the country for local and transnational real estate investors. By focusing on this historic quarter of Lisbon, this paper examines how recent processes of touristification and Airbnbisation in Alfama have disrupted processes of gentrification and studentification that took place in the quarter since the late 1990s and early 2000s. The paper concludes by suggesting that both urban touristification and Airbnbisation of Alfama emerge today as the most aggressive form of urban accumulation by dispossession and spatial displacement against not only lower classes but also earlier gentrifiers of the quarter.