Observatory
UPDATE | November 2023
From 2012, Ateliermob and
the cooperative Working with the 99% have worked in different ways in
the neighborhood of Terras da Costa (Almada). Our most visible
expression was the construction of the Community Kitchen of Terras da
Costa (with the Colectivo Warehouse and many other people), but this
work went far beyond this communitarian facility inaugurated in 2014.
It extended over time to the point that, for years, we were the only
institutions that, with our own budget, remained in the territory.
Over the last year, we prepared an observatory that could monitor and
register the displacement of people outside the neighborhood, but it
never came online.
Recently, we became aware
that there are other initiatives, with public investment, that aim to
transform the territory of Terras da Costa, and formally, we do not
know anything about these projects. Neither Ateliermob nor the
cooperative Working with the 99% are among the group of institutions
contacted to follow up, and therefore, we have decided to stop our
work in this territory.
Our door will always
remain open to the residents of Terras da Costa who request it,
individually or collectively, and we will not hesitate to continue
following what is happening. We still hope that the people currently
living in Terras da Costa may, one day, see their right to housing
and their right to the place guaranteed. And we also hope that those
who are now mobilizing for this territory will be able to
operationalize responses with and for the people who inhabit
it.
Ateliermob + Working with the 99%
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Without water, sewerage and with precarious housing, these were the living conditions of hundreds of people who inhabited and inhabit Terras da Costa.
The commencing of work was slow, but the first steps were taken in 2015, right after the electricity was cut in the neighbourhood, in May of that year, all illegal electrical connections were dismantled, generating enormous tension in the neighbourhood. Between the end of November 2015 and March 2016, the process of relocating the core of Rua do Juncal and the demolition of the houses took place. In 2016, ateliermob proposed to analyse, study and assemble information about the neighbourhood, so that the relocation process could start from the area to be demolished and with the residents as the main actors, believing that the reward would be on the day when all the inhabitants of that land have a decent house, in a neighbourhood built alongside them.
Today, in 2021, the Terras da Costa neighbourhood remains in the same location and more than 50 families continue to live in precarious housing, without water and sewerage, but with legal electricity. Now there is once again talk focusing on resettlement and a social recomposition of the city, the Cooperativa Trabalhar com os 99% together with its partners and the residents of the neighbourhood decided to build this Observatory of Removals so that the everyday of this piece of land of Costa da Caparicacan be documented.
Now that we are entering a new stage of uncertainty in the life of Terras da Costa, we believe that it is crucial to leave behind documentation of the process. Here we will map, record and share information about resettlements, and everything else that is considered important at each moment. Countering the persistent attempt to isolate each of the residents and build a common story is the motto of this project.
We are together - as is so often said in the Terras.