World Expositions constitute opportunities for urbanistic innovation and originality – new technical and architectonic trends – they formalise landmarks in urban evolution in the places where they are held and, as such, constitute a factor of urbanistic dynamism.

The World Exposition of 1998 will make a decisive contribution to transforming Lisbon into a city of the future, constituting a point of departure for a global change.

It was so conceived by the Urbanisation Plan when the reality of the EXPO ’98 imposed a limit on space and time, an urban concentration and a density of uses supported by multiple access points and parking lots and with so much capacity that after its closure it might tend to become empty – an urban desert.

It was not enough to provide an urban structure for the design of the World Exposition Site; it was necessary to ensure that this structure integrated with the city and constituted an innovative and at the same time unique, central and multifunctional part of the urban fabric.

Thus the holding of the EXPO 98 will make its mark on the Intervention Zone and comprise a moment when:

• The city of Lisbon becomes centred on the east which is constituted as the centre of the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon – the notion of the centre ceasing to correspond to the nucleus, the generator of peripheries, to become associated with an extensive area, with multiple accesses and multiple uses.
• Public space again assumes the scale of the pedestrian and is planned as a structural component of the centre and the form of the city, to which is associated a new aesthetic of urban landscape and the innovative construction and management of this space.
• The 1998 World Exposition bequeathed the heritage of its realisation, in urbanistic terms – new morphologies and typologies – architectonic – new buildings and technology - , cultural – new urban manifestations - new urban services – technical galleries for the installation of infrastructures, centralised distribution of heating and refrigeration, the automatic and selective collection of waste, an advanced telecommunications network.
• The ephemeral and urban achievements associated with it are understood as components of the city.
• The urbanistic and architectonic project reflects the generalisation of computerised techniques of information and communication – which make possible new conceptual approaches, new ways to bring about and manage the project of the city and its supervision.
• The environmental project reflects the analysis and intervention in terms of the geological conditioning factors; the quality of the soil, subterranean and surface waters, the air; the redevelopment of the waste landfill; the improvement of the waste water treatment plant.

The urbanistic and environmental project included strategic plans for real estate promotion; of mobility; of urban infrastructures; of the structure of the landscape and of the urban space for public use; of commerce; of security; of the environment; of energy, water and materials; of information.

In short, a 5km long riverfront with 340 hectares in area, which up until then had been a degraded borderland and insalubrious wasteland of the city, has been recovered for the city and integrated for its public use.