Neighbourhoods
How sound moves in an old neighbourhood
Narrow streets, hard surfaces and open windows make the acoustics of these quarters unlike anywhere modern.
Neighbourhoods
What each part of the city is actually like to walk around and stay in.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 2 of 2
Neighbourhoods
Bairro Alto is two different places twelve hours apart
The same few dozen blocks work as a quiet residential grid in the morning and as the loudest room in the city after dark.
Neighbourhoods
Mouraria, and how one hill became the most mixed part of the city
A steep tangle behind the castle hill that has absorbed newcomers for centuries and is doing it again. It is also where the tourist…
Neighbourhoods
What happens to a neighbourhood when the warehouses empty
The eastern riverfront was built for industry that has largely gone. What replaced it arrived in a predictable order, and the order…
Neighbourhoods
Belem is a monument district, not a neighbourhood
It reads as a place to live on a map and behaves like an open-air exhibition on the ground. Knowing which one you are visiting…
Neighbourhoods
Campo de Ourique, and what a flat grid does to daily life
A regular nineteenth-century expansion on a plateau, where the absence of gradient quietly determines who can live independently…
Neighbourhoods
Why a neighbourhood ends at a viaduct
Big roads and rail lines do not just take up space, they cut journeys. The effect on the streets either side is measurable and…
Neighbourhoods
The expo district and the case for building a quarter from nothing
A whole quarter planned at once on former industrial land, which makes it the clearest test in the city of what planning can and…
Neighbourhoods
The ground floors tell you where a street is going
Shopfronts are the leading indicator of neighbourhood change. Read them and you can tell who a street currently serves and who it…