“You can have a wonderful city of innovation but if there’s no social network and social welfare for people, you create friction and you create problems.”
– Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas
It’s an example not only of what’s possible when pragmatists in rival parties work together, Moedas said, but also of the kind of social policy that can really materially help people and make populists’ burn-it-all-down message less potent.
“We’re building municipal housing for those middle-class jobs,” he said. “For the last 20 or 30 years, there was never this level of investment.”
But Portugal is still not building homes fast enough to keep up with demand. The number of permits granted for construction of new housing in 2022 was 15,207, roughly enough for one home per every two new households forming each year in the country, according to a September 2023 research note from the Spain-based bank Caixa. The cost of construction materials, meanwhile, climbed by nearly 10%. Home prices are on track to rise an additional 9% next year. Rents in Lisbon are soaring so high that the city surpassed Singapore for the top spot on a list of real estate markets seeing the steepest jump in rental costs.
Moedas said his administration was working on digitalizing the permitting process, which he criticized as “too slow and too bureaucratic,” and setting up another program where the city will give a free plot of land to a group of individuals looking to build a cooperatively owned apartment building. But he also said the city offsets high prices by offering services like free public transportation for students and the elderly.
“You have to invest more in social policies than in everything else because the city depends on people living with dignity. If they don’t live with dignity, then the city doesn’t work,” he said. “You can have a wonderful city of innovation but if there’s no social network and social welfare for people, you create friction and you create problems.”
Open Image ModalA protester wears a protective mask and holds an anti-Nazi sign during a rally to demonstrate against fascism, Nazism and racism on July 25, 2020, in Lisbon, Portugal.
Horacio Villalobos via Getty Images
Established by the Phoenicians centuries before the founding of Rome, Lisbon emerged from centuries of rule by Muslim and Catholic theocrats to become the seat of a globe-spanning empire controlling key ports and territories along the trade routes of South America, Africa and Asia. Like Germany and Italy, Portugal lost its nascent democracy to a fascist dictatorship during the Great Depression. Since Portugal stayed neutral in World War II, the regime, which went on to wage its own brutal wars against colonial subjects vying for independence, held on to power until the 1970s. It wasn’t until the end of that decade, as the colonies split off into sovereign nations, that Lisbon held its first truly open elections.
Today the city is a tourist hot spot beloved for its music and food in an LGBTQ-friendly country renowned for its lawmakers’ boldly humane approach to social problems, such as a 2001 law that decriminalized all drug consumption and led to a drop in addiction-related illnesses.
It’s not perfect. But parties like Chega, whose youth groups openly idolize the former dictator António Salazar, “just want to break the system,” Moedas said.
“That’s the easy thing,” he said.
Giving fair consideration to opposing ideas and taking time to “hear both sides and listen to different views, and come up with policies for concrete problems,” on the other hand?
Moedas paused. “The tough part is being a moderate politician,” he said.
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Source link : https://www.huffpost.com/entry/europe-far-right-lisbon-portugal-carlos-moedas_n_65735942e4b001ec86a7d576/amp
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Publish date : 2023-12-09 08:00:00
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