The project deals with the access to adequate housing and proper living conditions for refugees and other vulnerable migrants in Portugal, while identifying and analysing the specificities of the Algarve region during (post)COVID-19. It refers to a multisectoral approach for understanding difficulties and embracing opportunities considering national decentralisation strategies in a context where the interior is heavily deserted and depopulated, and risk of poverty is significant. What is more, the Algarve is the region with the second highest number of migrants, following the capital city. Besides, COVID-19 brought extra challenges by putting a magnifying lens over a myriad of structural and everyday life problems, at the same time forcing social distancing hindering interactions and support, and on poor digital media representations of migrations influencing opinions.
The project aims to recognise rural-urban tensions and housing/land tenure paradigms in medium-small sized cities and rural areas of the Algarve and the strategical, political, and specific causes at the root of living deprivation. It also seeks to identify innovative local capacities to create opportunities and problem solving according to existing socio-spatial characteristics, municipal strategies, lifestyles, among other specificities, and the stakeholders promoting them. The research reaches for the latest trends in the Lisbon region to learn from these experiences, putting the Algarve in perspective bearing in mind dimensions as labour-economic needs, demographic and real-estate pressures. This goal is in line with the project’s effort to discuss territorial models of management and development. The study also addresses connections shared by important stakeholders, including policymakers, and communication tools reinforcing networks of knowledge and action-research driven activities, identifying tendencies/recommendations for the unpredictable (post)COVID-19 future.
Methods clarify how to use communication tools to do this architecture-urbanism research and are divided in two sections. The first concerns – How to do? –, referring to knowing the situation, choosing the case studies, identifying its specificities, thinking of alternatives, and making records. The second section explains – How to communicate? – with the task of sharing and disseminating data analysis being supported by three key-tools for analysing, restoring, and sharing knowledge, creating opportunities, monitoring actions, and strengthening networks. The project will also circulate academy-related scientific production. As such, it will use digital media tools to, on the one hand, produce empirical and scientific knowledge and, on the other hand, present outcomes of the research, all the while creating interactive and immersive experiences regarding migrations. Furthermore, using digital media tools to present results is a key-purpose of the study, this being aligned with the strategy of the host institution (CIAC).
Esta publicação também está disponível em: Portuguese (Portugal)