Workers’ housing in Lisbon in the second half of the nineteenth century

Abstract

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the epidemics that plagued Lisbon and the installation of factories in the  peripheral areas of the city attracting labor, led to the change in the way of inhabiting the capital. While the population of the middle and upper classes feared to be affected by diseases that attributed the lack of health conditions in poor neighborhoods, newcomers  settled in the vicinity of workplaces, sprawling areas of unhealthy habitat and creating new ones. The response of public authorities  and in particular the municipality, through new laws, health regulations and urban expansion plans of the city, will change  relationship between its inhabitants, creating zoning areas by social levels, and deepening the differences between the base of the  social pyramid and the middle class.