What Does Black Lisbon Look Like?

The aim of this paper is to explore urban racialization as a process that emerges in specific places of the city. Using the publicly accessible Google Maps and Google Street View imagery of Lisbon Metropolitan Area, I conduct a fine-grained analysis of the urban and architectural forms through which...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Elena Taviani
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Rosenberg & Sellier 2022-12-01
Series:Ardeth
Subjects:
Online Access:http://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/2653
Description
Summary:The aim of this paper is to explore urban racialization as a process that emerges in specific places of the city. Using the publicly accessible Google Maps and Google Street View imagery of Lisbon Metropolitan Area, I conduct a fine-grained analysis of the urban and architectural forms through which race materialises in a central historical square, in a few peripheral social housing areas and in some informal urban gardens. Inscribed in the wider Black European framework, Black Lisbon is here intended as a provocation more than a label, and the concept of blackness is adopted as a visible tracker of micro-scale mechanisms of racialization as well as resistance to them. Considering the complex spatial dynamic that results and that encompasses different forms of omissions, displacements, replacements and place-makings, I argue that certain buildings, settings, bodies presence, urban spots and gardens arise as critical elements of the (still disregarded) compilation of non-white European architectures.
ISSN:2532-6457
2611-934X