If buildings could talk. Makeshift Urbanity on the Outskirts of Lisbon

This chapter is based on the study of recuperative dwelling practices in an informal settlement located in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Drawing on ethnographic material, it discusses how operations of repair and re-appropriation of dwellings evolve as world-making practices that create a different degree of production of space and belonging to Santa Filomena. In this neighbourhood, recuperation occurs through the act of ‘mending’ materials that would otherwise be treated as waste, as well as by ‘fixing up’ things in absence of formal protocols and in an ethnographically observed context of vulnerability and permanent crisis. From this perspective, acts of repair and re-appropriation can be considered, not only as analytical concepts but also as gestures generative of positive affects and communal participation. An interesting paradox here is that, once the makeshift urbanity is deemed legitimated and made to look formal, the immediate intervention – initially considered as temporary – sets the terms of what happens later and acquires a durable condition.