The Urban Park of Quinta Marquês de Abrantes will have about seven hectares, with pedestrian and cycling paths, a playground, sports fields, community vegetable gardens, and a "village square" in the area of the Marvila train station.
It will be the future Quinta Marquês de Abrantes Urban Park and will be located in Marvila next to Bairro dos Alfinetes. There will be around seven hectares of green space with walking and cycling routes, a children's playground, sports fields, community gardens and a "village square" in the Marvila train station area.
The new Urban Park was put out to public tender in February 2020 and the winner was the project by landscape architect João Nunes, founder and director of the PROAP studio. In the competition documentation, the Quinta Marquês de Abrantes Urban Park is framed in the development of the eastern part of Lisbon, more specifically in the parishes of Beato and Marvila, where "major urban interventions are underway" and will make these areas a new destination in the city; there is talk of the Beato Creative Hub, the Oriental Hospital Park, the quadrupling of the Belt Line, the Marvila-Rio road link and the future Third Crossing of the Tagus (TTT) to serve the high-speed rail line.
"Marvila's public spaces are clearly marked by the predominance of individual transportation, the circulation channels are oversized and the spaces for collective use are leftover, unqualified and marked by parking", it reads. "For urban regeneration to be effective, the central element of the strategy will have to be a change in the paradigm of public space, focusing it on social cohesion, sustainability and associating it with the planned polarizing facilities."
The Quinta Marquês de Abrantes Urban Park will be the driving force behind this cohesion. The park will connect the entire surrounding area; its extension will comprise a "strip to the north of the Belt Line, between Av. Infante D. Henrique, to the east, and Rua João César Monteiro, to the west, being limited to the north by the streets Dinah Silveira de Queiroz, António Gedeão, Alberto José Pessoa, by the existing buildings on these streets and by the Quinta das Flores Park".
The urban park project takes into account the areas allocated to the extension of the railway infrastructure on the Belt Line, but also the transformation of the Chelas and Marvila stations into railway stations. Next to the future Marvila station, it is planned to create a "village square" in 2023, reminiscent of Marvila's rural past until the mid-19th century, where there were properties such as Quinta do Marquês de Abrantes or Quinta dos Alfinetes.
The Quinta Marquês de Abrantes Urban Park was designed with ideas from the local community, which was polled. One of the contributions was no visual barriers from the train to the garden so that those taking the train can see the park. The Lisbon City Council has a budget of around 5 million euros for this park; no date has been announced for the completion of the work.
