An evaluation of urban regeneration: the effectiveness of a retail-led project in Lisbon

Abstract

To overcome the decline of the vitality and viability of town centres across several Western European cities, urban regeneration projects have been implemented. Despite their dissemination, there are shortcomings regarding the evaluation of the impacts produced by such projects. We aim to contribute to the existing literature on the subject by undertaking an evaluation of a retail-led urban regeneration project that was implemented in Lisbon’s historic centre. We conclude that although there were significant outputs, the project was not effective and did not manage to improve the viability of the area as an important commercial area of Lisbon.

Keywords:

• urban regeneration
• retail-led urban regeneration
• Lisbon
• retail

Acknowledgements

We thank the FCT - Portuguese national funding agency for science, research and technology and the Center for Geographical Studies for funding the research on which this paper is based. We are grateful to the editor, Professor Rob Atkinson and the two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments made on a previous version of the paper. We wish to thank Professor Teresa Barata-Salgueiro for her support in the research that formed the basis of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FCT - Portuguese national funding agency for science, research and technology [SFRH/BD/69355/2010] and the Center for Geographical Studies from Lisbon University.