Lisbon in Height: Growing Without Losing Its Soul!

Like in many cities around the world, Lisbon, city of hills and light, deserves our reflection and consideration, as well as a debate about its vertical future. High-rise construction, a subject that sparks both passion and controversy, has brought into collision the preservation of historical identity and the pressures of economic and demographic growth. In this opinion article, I intend to explore the multiple facets of this issue, advocating for a careful and planned development that modernizes the city “without stripping it of its soul.” This way, the weight of history and the city’s urban fabric, the economic and social equation, the technical challenges and sustainability will all be addressed and considered, along with the definition of a vision for the city’s future, mindful of the opportunity brought by the construction of Lisbon’s New Airport.

The Weight of History and the Urban Fabric
Lisbon’s identity is intrinsically tied to its rugged topography and to an urban fabric that has evolved organically over centuries. From Mouraria and Alfama, with their winding streets, to the Pombaline Downtown, an example of resilience and Enlightenment planning, the city presents a diversity of urban fabrics that tell its history. Preserving this architectural heritage and its unique landscape, marked by the “seven hills,” is a fundamental pillar of Lisbon’s identity.

Urban planning legislation, such as the Municipal Master Plan (PDM), has sought, with greater or lesser success, to manage growth, establishing rules for building volume and height. However, real estate pressure has led to projects that challenge the city’s traditional scale, sparking heated debate about the visual impact and the distortion of consolidated areas. High-rise construction, when randomly inserted into the heart of the historic city, risks creating visual disruption, breaking the harmony and coherence of the urban landscape.

The Economic and Social Equation of Projects
From an economic standpoint, high-rise construction appears, at first glance, as a solution to the scarcity of space, and the consequent inflation of real estate prices. Concentrating housing, offices, and hotels in large-scale buildings can, in theory, optimize land use and reduce infrastructure costs. High-rise projects, with luxury apartments, offices for major companies, and renowned hotels, promise significant economic returns for their promoters.

The social dimension of these projects, however, should operate under a different and more promising logic. Instead of inserting towers into historic neighborhoods and displacing communities, the proposal I advocate consists in replacing a polluting, noise-generating infrastructure with a newly planned urban centrality. This option translates into undeniable gains in quality of life for surrounding areas. The core challenge of housing affordability remains, given the cost of construction. However, a project of this scale and nature allows urban planning to be the solution: it is the opportunity to enshrine, from the very beginning, significant quotas for housing, affordable rentals, and social diversity. Thus, verticalization would not be a driver of gentrification, but a tool to create an inclusive and vibrant neighborhood, easing real estate pressure in the rest of the city and transforming an urban barrier into a new green and built lung.

Technical Challenges and Sustainability
Raising high-rise buildings in Lisbon entails considerable technical challenges.
The city lies in a zone of moderate seismicity, which requires advanced and costly engineering solutions to ensure structural safety. The geological conditions of the soil also vary significantly, demanding in-depth studies for each project.

In addition, the concentration of thousands of people in skyscrapers places enormous pressure on existing infrastructure. The water supply, sanitation, energy distribution, and telecommunications networks must be scaled up to meet this new reality. From an environmental perspective, high-rise buildings can be designed to be energy efficient, incorporating solar harvesting technologies, thermal insulation, and water management systems.

A Vision for the Future: The Opportunity of the New Airport
Lisbon’s future does not lie in a dogmatic rejection of high-rise construction, but rather in its intelligent and planned integration. The solution does not reside in scattering isolated towers across the consolidated city, but in designating specific areas for vertical development, where it can be implemented harmoniously and sustainably.

In this context, the potential relocation of Humberto Delgado Airport represents a unique and historic opportunity to rethink Lisbon’s urban paradigm. The vast hectares that would be freed up offer the ideal “blank canvas” for the creation of a 21st-century garden city. In this new neighborhood, an urban development could be planned that includes high-rise buildings with a diversity of uses—housing, offices, commerce, cultural and leisure facilities—surrounded by large green spaces and served by an excellent public transport network.

The creation of a new skyline in this area, visible from different points of the city, could symbolize a modern and contemporary Lisbon, one that embraces the future without erasing its past. This new centrality, conceived from the ground up on principles of sustainability and quality of life, would help relieve pressure on the historic center, preserving its identity and returning it, in part, to a more authentic and less massified experience.

In sum, high-rise construction in Lisbon should not be seen as an inevitability to be passively accepted, but as an urban planning tool to be used with mastery and foresight. By channeling vertical development into strategically defined areas, such as the current Airport grounds, Lisbon can evolve into a more balanced, inclusive, and sustainable metropolis, honoring its history while building a future worthy of its stature.

The debate on high-rise construction in Lisbon presents itself as a unique moment for Portuguese urbanism. The eventual relocation of the Airport offers the historic opportunity to plan, from scratch, a new modern, sustainable centrality with its own identity.

September 2025