If cities are where we choose to live, how would you make them as wonderful as possible today without storing up even bigger challenges for people of tomorrow?  

I’m fascinated by how we can empower people to shape the things that matter to them for the better.  I didn’t think of this as ‘activism’ until I received the label from a journalist in 2023.  

A couple of years ago, when talking to people in my guerilla allotment in Lisbon, I learned about a proposed ‘mega-urbanization’ project stretching over 48 hectares and involving the construction of some 2,400 dwellings. The city hall, the Câmara de Lisboa, has branded it the ‘biggest urban remodelling operation after Expo ‘98 and Alta de Lisboa’.  

In another time that kind of project might feel like progress.  But Lisbon is a city which already has 50,000 empty or abandoned houses and an exposure to extreme heat that could make it uninhabitable within the next two decades.  Every city in the northern hemisphere has a housing crisis. And Lisbon’s is unjust and untenable. But I believe the solution for the city is not to concrete over the open space that’s left. It lies in rethinking and adapting what’s already been built, and doubling down hard on the green infrastructure that our children will thank us for.

This is why I led an ‘alternative public consultation asking citizens what they really want, and to imagine possibilities both for the city’s present-day challenges and long-term liveable future.  The results were inspiring and the reactions astonishing.  You can read more about them in Le Monde Diplomatique, Lisbon for People, and Público (articles in Portuguese).