With or without you: models of urban requalification under neoliberalismo in Portugal

Goals that underpin policies in the fields of housing and urban requalification, as well as the policy instruments through which these policies are carried out, have been problematised from numerous perspectives. Regarding the mismatch between policy goals and their outputs, Elsinga (2017, 149) argues that “many current housing policies are based on wrong (explicit or implicit) assumptions”, while, in a study of the Portuguese case, Alves (2017a) questions the rationality of policies that in countries with high levels of income inequality and poverty support the commodification of housing and the development of debt-driven ownership. Likewise, Mendes (2014) and Queirós (2015) question the morality of strategies of urban renewal that, under adverse socio-economic circumstances, use housing as an investment asset within a globalised financial market.