Urban transformation and diffusion of tourist practices: visiting Alcântara at the turn of the twentieth century

Abstract

This article examines the effects of tourism on the transformation of the perception of the urban world. I aim at exploring the role that tourist practices have played in the evolution of the organisation and uses of urban spaces or, in other words, in the way the city has been experienced and lived. The development of tourist practices and situations has contributed to framing the discontinuous progress of urbanisation. To better understand this process, I propose to move beyond exploration of specific tourist contexts and places, and to think about the complex relationship between, on the one hand, the material and social arrangements of the city, and on the other, the discourses and representations produced around it. My research draws on a specific case study, namely: The transformation of representations of the Alcântara neighbourhood in turn-of-the-century Lisbon, from an industrial suburb to a popular and ‘urban’ place [Vidal, F. (2006). Les habitants d'Alcântara. Histoire sociale d'un quartier de Lisbonne au début du XXe siècle [The inhabitants of Alcântara. A social history of a Lisbon neighbourhood in the early twentieth century]. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion]. During the turn to the twentieth century, Alcântara became ‘visible’ and ‘visitable’. The former industrial suburb was thenceforth perceived as a pleasant and urban place, both in a practical way (patent, for example, in the experience of walking down the streets or of visiting industrial sites) and in a symbolic way (through the construction of neighbourhood identities and heritage policies).

Keywords:

• urban space
• sightseeing
• industrial heritage
• sociability
• Lisbon neighbourhoods

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Cyril Isnart and Sofia Sampaio for their careful reading and relevant advice to deepen some of the reflections developed in this text.

Notes

1. In this period, the population of Alcântara rose at a rate clearly in excess of that of the broader Lisbon population. According to the 1900 census, the parish of Alcântara – the boundaries of which correspond approximately to the area traditionally known as the Alcântara ‘neighbourhood’ – had 22,745 residents, making up 6.4% of the total population of the Lisbon Municipality. In 1846, that proportion was 4.4%. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Alcântara's population growth became less fierce. In 1940 its proportion in relation to the total population of Lisbon had returned to the numbers recorded in the middle of the nineteenth century: 4.9%, with a total parish population of 34,903 residents.

2. This study of cartographic representations of Lisbon is based on a review of 10 documents: Cartas topographica de Lisboa e seus subúrbios 1807 (1831); Panorama ou vista geral de Lisboa ao longo do Tejo, J. P. Monteiro, s.d., (cca.1840); Carta Topográfica da Cidade de Lisboa de 1856/1858, escala 1/1000 (1858); Planta do rio Tejo e suas margens entre Beato e Algés (1871); Planta da cidade de Lisboa com os diferentes melhoramentos introduzidos e projectados (1888); Lisboa e seus arredores (1891); Planta de Lisboa (1891); Petit Plan de la ville de Lisbonne, Librairie Correira Pinto (1906); “Tourist” Planta de Lisboa, Folhas 1 e 2, escala 1/10000, s. .d. (cca. 1900); Planta da Cidade de Lisboa (1935–1936).

3. In the case of Alcântara, the administrative definition of the quarter – the ‘freguesia’ or ‘civil parish’ – corresponds more or less to the limits of the word ‘neighborhood’ in the popular sense. It is not the case for the other older quarters (Vidal, 2006).

4. J. P. Freire, Alcântara, apontamentos para uma monografia (1929); N. de Araújo, Peregrinações em Lisboa, Lisbon (1939).

5. For more on this, see sociologist Christian Topalov's detailed analysis of the methodology of Charles Booth's survey (Topalov, 1991).

6. Ministério das Obras Públicas, Inquérito Industrial de 1881, Lisboa, 1881.

7. Resistance seems to have been feeble, however. The final report on the western neighbourhood makes mention of only one explicit refusal of a visit request (a glass factory). However, the absence of replies to the visit requests may in itself be taken as an implicit refusal.

8. Archive Sociedade Promotora de Educação Popular, Lisboa.

9. The Promotera used the administrative definition of the neighborhood that is the ‘freguesia’ or ‘civil parish’.