Despite of the fact that I am staying in Portugal only for 2 months, I have already visited the main Portugal cities, such as Lisbon, Porto, and Coimbra. Walking along their city centers it was impossible not to notice that most of buildings are abandoned. Later, I experience the same situation in Setubal, a town located 23 kilometers away from my apartment in Portugal. So, I have started to ask myself why no one lives in these beautiful and posh buildings that preserve not only splendor of Portuguese former glory, but also unique architectural styles.
To find the answers I did a small research, which helps me to understand what kind of problem modern Portuguese society is facing. Unfortunately, I must state that towns in Portugal are shrinking.
“Looking at the demographic evolution from the 1991 until 2011 we identified 17 cities that are losing inhabitants, 9 of them persistently and 8 since 2001. This decline is present in the two biggest cities of Portugal, Lisbon and Porto that present 17% and 21% decline respectively. The decline trend in both cities is visible since 1970. According to Panagopoulos and Barreira (2012), one in five buildings in Lisbon is either abandoned or in poor condition. Nevertheless, in addition to the suburbanization process we found that both cities show considerable losses in the construction and transformation sectors. Specifically, in Porto, unemployment rate is the highest of the shrinking cities and 5% above the national average. In the case of Lisbon, the city registers 5% increase of unemployment from 2001 to 2011; however it’s still below the national average. This might imply that Lisbon is more resilient to economic transformations than Porto”.
Porto, Portugal’s second-largest city, has long chafed at Lisbon’s dominance. The two Atlantic port cities share about half the country’s population and engage in teasing one-upmanship that mirrors the rivalry between Madrid and Barcelo
na. Porto portrays itself as a city of hard work and enterprise and Lisbon as a city that likes to sit about and giving orders and spending the country’s money. Porto begrudges the capital its cosmopolitan glamour and scoffs at its apparent blithe high-l
iving. “Porto works while Lisbon plays,” the saying goes. The region around Porto is home to the country’s major textile and footwear industries. Porto, like the north of Portugal generally, is markedly more conserva
tive and traditional than Lisbon and the south – a feature that generated so much friction after the 1974 Carnation Revolution that a civil war looked to be on the cards. Lisbon has long basked in its national primacy and privilege. It is the only Portuguese region whose per capita income is above the EU’s average. Northern rear of Portugal, by contrast, barely reach sixty per cent of the average.
