10 years of Lisbon’s evolution in 10 minutes: How to finance urban projects to improve public space? How to attract international talent and investors to the city? Rui Ramos-Pinto Coelho, Executive Director of Invest Lisboa, shared his expert knowledge and practical experience at #reSITE2017: In/visible City, the 6th annual international confrence.
Rui Ramos-Pinto Coelho tells the heartening story of what happened in the last ten years in Lisbon city and he describes the situation of Lisbon in 2007 by using the words “bankrupt, loss of inhabitants, degraded city centre, collapsing, unmotivated”. Within a decade, the city is hopefully beating the all-time records in real estate investment, tourism and entrepreneurship. Moreover, within the same period tourism has grown in double digits! While entrepreneurship didn’t even exist before 2007, today the city Lisbon is one of the top European start up cities. He clarifies that the media has been also playing a big role in the process. Wallpaper Magazine even announced the city as “the Best City in the World” in 2016. So does this glow of enthusiasm show us a bit of exaggeration? Well, in his humble opinion – this might be the truth. Yet still what the city has achieved within less than ten years are worthy of respect and very inspiring for other cities around the world. As he explains the big part of the success were “soft infrastructure like urban planning, reorganization, partnerships, incentives, legislation, leadership, hundreds of small projects and Startup Lisboa” that had a tremendous effect on the city.
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(c) reSITE 2017
reSITE is an international nonprofit platform based in Prague. We work at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, politics, culture, and economics. We act as a catalyst for social action and innovative leadership.
We encourage an exchange of ideas about making cities more livable, competitive and resilient. We protect and promote public space, architecture, and sustainable development in cities.
Why? To stimulate action for sustainable urban design and therefore better cities. We stand for public space.
