It is a unique geographically diverse place of sloping hills and valleys, with buildings of blue limestone, plasterwork and frames in blended colours, pavements in white stone and basalt, a breezy and windy place with its waterfront forming the emblematic countenance of a point of arrival.

It is a place of metamorphosis, reinventing itself and interweaving a succession of diverse urban styles; a city with an expansive culture, but one which is paradoxically both inward-looking and outward-looking.

In urbanistic terms the city is highly complex and sensitive – it has undergone a process of cultural sedimentation and articulation with its surroundings, with little in the way of structural urbanistic initiative – it is a fragile city, with conflicts of scale due to the rapid growth of its recent transformation, possessing little public space.

The structure of the city of Lisbon, established on the hill of the Castle, begins with the model of the Roman cities – organisation by centres, well defined functionally and spatially, where the castle (hill), the civic centre (the slope), the port (the riverfront), are laid out with the dimension of a city in the network of Roman towns, all interconnected by the network of roads.

Successively, the Arab occupation, the Christian reconquest, the installation of the capital of the kingdom, the periods of the discoveries to D. João V, all construct a city where multiple cultures and urban models coexist.

With the catastrophe of 1755 – earthquake, seaquake, fire – came the city’s first structuring initiative which not only brought about the design of a new urban model and a new style of architecture – including the methods of construction, the modulation, rationalisation and standardisation of materials – but also it would promote a major transformation in urban production and management.

Later, public areas were added on – boulevards and walkways – and with the development of transportation – coinciding with industrial growth – the city gained a whole new dimension. The railway and the tram came along, the road system spread out with new avenues following simple geometrical models which gave way to the organised expansion of the city and the construction of new neighbourhoods.

The urban model then proposed, associated with the demarcation of the urban perimeter by a ring-road – with the river remaining as a natural barrier to growth – created hierarchies within the city in relation to its centre, creating the future peripheries and bringing speculation concerning the value of the land.

In 1900 the railway belt marked out the periphery of the constructed city – the Alcântara Valley, Sete Rios, Entre-Campos, Xabregas. The population was about 300,000 inhabitants and the urban model relied upon the city as a harmonically structured area.

The New State idealised the city as a whole and its first urbanisation plan (1948, E. de Groer) structured it according to a pattern of radials and circles – channels of road traffic – which dissected the city.

Land is expropriated and large reserves of urban terrain are constituted which will be used in the construction of the Monsanto Forest Park, the Airport, neighbourhoods of social housing, Public Works and the Portuguese World Exposition.

The increase in individual transport to the detriment of collective transportation and the rapid concentration of the population in the city of Lisbon ( 800,000 inhabitants in 1960) changed the consolidated growth of the city. The road network channels profoundly transformed its physiognomy – they altered the time and scale of a city with a complex urban topography and layout – they fragmented it and destroyed the unity that had formed over the centuries.

The Bridge over the river Tagus, between Alcântara and Almada (1966), did nothing to improve the urban organisation of the city of Lisbon. It was thought of as a component of the national network of highways which would link up the motorways of Cascais, Sintra, the West and North and as such it dissects and congests Lisbon.

When the city stabilised at 850,000 inhabitants within the limits of its urban perimeter (before the commencement of its regression with the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon reaching 2,500,000 inhabitants) it was a city structured by roadways and specialised, mono-functional areas.

When all of its land became occupied due to a process of population migration, decentralisation and dispersal of power, the city then began a process of recovery, redevelopment, regeneration and revitalisation of its terrain – recycling and re-using the city.

It is within this context that the idea arose to launch a major catalytic project of renewal of the city which would mobilise the means and generate the synergies to bring about the effective modernisation of Lisbon.

The urbanistic and environmental components constitute determining factors in the redevelopment of the Intervention Zone of the EXPO 98, with other relevant aspects being the climate, hydric resources, geology, the reduction in energy consumption associated with urban comfort, transportation, buildings and infrastructures – where the centralised distribution of heating and refrigeration is included – the urban design associated with the conception of public space and green areas, the system of viewpoints, diversity and density of use, cultural and architectural evidence of urban art and technological innovation, the uniqueness and sensitivity of the place itself.