Street art placemaking in a segregated Lisbon neighborhood: Reflections on socio-spatial stigmatization and urban governance

Abstract

The present article examines how a street art project led by young people of African descent in the Bairro da Torre neighborhood of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area has contributed to challenging the historically negative perception associated with this territory. For decades, both media and institutional narratives have portrayed the neighborhood as a no-go area linked to crime and marginalization. Drawing on ethnographic research, the present article analyzes the ambivalent role of street art as a tool for urban regeneration and for contesting territorial stigma, seeking to symbolically dissociate the neighborhood from imaginaries of violence. At the core of our analysis is the way in which these artistic interventions have been used by local authorities as an urban governance strategy to “clean up” public spaces by removing actors and social practices deemed “dangerous,” thereby reinforcing social control and facilitating the expansion of gentrification.