QUEIRÓS, João, Aleixo. Génese,(des)estruturação e desaparecimento de um bairro do Porto [1969-2019], Porto, Edições Afrontamento, 224 pp. ISBN: 978-972-36-1712-2

Synopsis

Decivilising, demonising, demolishing: in this necessary, harsh, and compelling book, João Queirós presents the main results of a sociological field research on the origins, trajectory, and fate of Bairro do Aleixo, a council neighbourhood built in the mid-1970s, which has since then been emptied and  demolished.

This research explores, along with the residents and other local actors, the fifty-year time horizon from the publication of the Study on the Urban Renovation of Barredo in 1961 by Fernando Távora – who designed the construction project of the Aleixo Neighbourhood for the resettlement of the families displaced by the urban and housing intervention then planned for the heart of the historic centre of Porto – to the total emptying of the neighbourhood, which the Porto City Council began to demolish in 2011 and which in 2019, already without two of its five building blocks, saw the departure of the last residents.