Visualising the lived realities of ageing in Lisbon’s historic centre, Portugal

Source abstract

This visual essay examines how touristification reshapes the conditions that support healthy ageing among older women in Lisbon’s historic centre, Portugal, through an analysis of the documentary Silenced Voices: being a woman and growing old in the tourist centre of Lisbon. The documentary shows how housing precarity, the privatisation of public space, the loss of neighbourhood services and visitor-oriented mobility progressively undermine ageing in place, becoming embodied through fatigue, insecurity, loneliness and emotional strain. The essay conceptualises touristification as a form of slow urban violence operating through incremental spatial and relational transformations that erode the material and social conditions sustaining health in later life. Rather than treating the documentary simply as an illustration of research findings, it demonstrates how audiovisual practice makes visible embodied, affective and sensory dimensions of urban change that are often overlooked in conventional urban health research. By bringing these everyday experiences into view, the essay highlights how tourism-led urban redevelopment reshapes unequal trajectories of healthy ageing and contributes to a broader understanding of urban health inequalities.