Le droit à la ville – recent social housing policies in Porto, the case of Tomás Gonzaga street

Abstract

This paper focuses the recent social housing policies of Porto city hall (at the north of Portugal). Considering the huge development of the tourist sector in the last few years, Porto municipality launched a social housing program to control gentrification. The main goal of this policy is avoiding the problems associated to the displacement of families from their traditional residential area due to the real-estate speculation in the historical city center, classified by UNESCO as Humanity Heritage since 1996. Seventeen plots were selected for the 1st phase of the program, being Tomás Gonzaga Street one of those plots used in the article as a case study.