Optimistic Suburbia, building an heritage

Abstract

Between the 1960s and 1980s Luanda, Lisbon and Macao saw the emergence of a number of residential complexes that had a shared matrix: privately developed high-rise buildings aimed at the middle-classes and located on the periphery. The three cities had different urban histories, even if they were united by the common denominator of being under Portuguese political and administrative control. Lisbon was a European capital made up of successive strata and occupation phases with ancient and mediaeval predecessors. Luanda was an old outpost on the west coast of Southern Africa that gradually took on the status of main city in Angola in the course of the 19th century and, in 1960, was in an ongoing process of rapid population growth and was expanding through its many areas of informal occupation. And Macao, an Asian city within the confines of a peninsula and the boundaries that separated it from continental China, was in a process of self-renewal and permanent reutilization of the space, with the urban transformation processes being characterized by a speed that set it apart from the conventional European city. It is in this context of diversity of backgrounds and conditions that an analysis of these residential complexes takes on particular importance, by applying residential models with a common urban, architectural and social matrix. This article stems for a wider research project entitled “Homes for the biggest number: Lisbon, Luanda, Macao” and its main intent is to analyze the residential models that were applied in the construction of the peripheries of cities with a Portuguese background from the 1960s onwards, and its current state in an historical and patrimonial perspectives.