From the perspective of this work, after the last global financial crisis (2008), the Portuguese capital has been going through a new round of “urban entrepreneurship”, this time linked to new business models and expectations of the digital economy based on “sociotechnical imaginaries”.
The arrival of the “Web Summit” (2016), the largest digital economy conference in the world and held annually since then, and the announcement of the construction of “Hub Criativo do Beato” (Beato Creative Hub, 2016), an infrastructure to bring together and boost already robust companies and technological startups, are important milestones of this process.
In terms of unexpected effects, we can list three typifications of innovative Lisbon:
(1) [City of exception and privileges] - It is a categorization that dialogues with the debate on the “State of exception” and refers to the formation and normalization of hierarchies and privileges in city life. It is structured into:
(a) specific legislation for the business of the digital innovation ecosystem;
(b) Gentrification by ecosystem: arrival of digital elites and “sociotechnical vanguards” and increase in the cost of urban living;
(c) The contradictions of diversity: there is a precarious, occasional and (still) subaltern inclusion of women, ethnic minorities, urban poor and elderly people.
(2) [Disruptive city] - Venture capital needs risk cities just as disruptive technologies need disruptive cities. In other words: those cities in which social cohesion can be crossed by an economic restructuring (types of jobs, profit margins, access to affordable housing, average cost of living, ethnic-cultural landscape) very quickly.
(3) [Anxious city] - Cities in which sociotechnical imaginaries legitimize an unstable, uncomfortable, anxious present. A suspension of present-day priorities generates insecurity and demotivation, creating a shorter and less optimistic “horizon of expectations”.
[Impact]
Impact on the researcher’s career - At the end of this MSCA cycle, I feel I have reached my main goal for this post-doctoral experience, that is, reinforcing and upgrading my links with Brazilian academic life.
Benefits for society - Immediate circulation of new ideas and critical reflections to promote urban well-being in Lisbon (and other cities) among those interviewed: stakeholders, residents, workers, entrepreneurs and investors. Topics such as: “soft landing” of infrastructures and digital economy events in the city; psychic effects of rapid urban transformation and gentrification on vulnerable groups (e.g. anxious expectations, fear, feelings of loss and forgetfulness); full inclusion of subaltern groups in the digital innovation ecosystem; gender, class, racism and ageism inequalities in state and private strategies in favor of the digital economy; visibility to specific demands of precarious platform workers and immigrants; valorization of language, culture and local sociability in actions in favor of digital innovation.
European policy objectives - (i) on a scientific level, the dissemination of data on the positive and negative effects of urban transformation processes linked to the search for digital innovation; (ii) at the institutional level, the establishment of direct contacts with stakeholders of Portuguese State, EU, companies, community; (iii) on a sociocultural and symbolic level (“soft power” and “talent attraction”), the dissemination of information about the excellence of EU scientific projects among Brazilian society.
