For Martim Moniz Square, an "open and barrier-free" garden is planned, for people of all ages and cultures, that integrates with its surroundings, helps mitigate heat waves (offering shade and water), and contributes to improving pedestrian circulation and air quality.
The launching of the public tender, in January of next year, for the new Martim Moniz Square was approved at the Lisbon City Council's executive meeting last week. The conception contest will allow us to find an idea of execution and project for that square, from a series of guidelines, already defined and that resulted from the participative process carried out in the last years.
The launching of the ideas contest was approved - through a proposal presented by the Councilor of Urbanism, Joana Almeida - with the votes in favor of the seven councilors of the New Times and five from PS, votes against from PCP (two), BE (one) and Citizens For Lisbon (one), and the abstention of Livre (one). The approval included the parts, details, budget and jury for the public tender to be launched in January.
Initially, the vote that would unblock the launching of the contest was scheduled for a town hall meeting at the end of Julybut, after discussion, it was postponed. The reason for this postponement was a proposed amendment presented by Livre, which did not meet with consensus. Although the executive councilors agreed with the principle of the proposed change, legally there was no agreement. Livre proposed that the idea contest should result in five proposals instead of oneJoana Almeida wanted to allow the people of the city to discuss and submit changes to these five ideas; the authors of the projects could then take these suggestions from the public in the final versions.
In July, Carlos Moedas had indicated that, "from a political point of view, [Livre's] proposal makes perfect sense"but, the Vereador of Urbanism had clarified that "the information I have from my Office is that this proposal from the Free is illegal". At the same time, Rui Tavares, for Livre, understood that "the legislation allows" that a public discussion be held with five selected works from the design competition. Now, in November, there is again no agreement on the legality, with Moedas' team arguing that public design competitions - such as the one to be launched - only allow the selection of an idea in light of the current Public Contracts Code (CCP).
The proposed change to the Freethat had been presented in July, ended up being rejected with eight votes against (six of the New Times and one from the PS), six abstentions (four from the PS and two from the PCP), and only three votes in favor (Livre, BE, and Cidadãos Por Lisboa).
Changed calendar
With the delay in the approval of the ideas contest, the whole calendar for the Martim Moniz Square was changed. The launching of the competition, which was foreseen for last September, will now take place in January 2023 and the different proposals should be known at a public exhibition in July, when the winning team should also be chosen. This will be followed by a detailed presentation of a first draft of the winning project, the finalization of this project, a new public presentation, and finally, in 2025, the launching of a new public tender, this time to find a contractor to execute the work. This, in turn, should only be ready in March 2026.
Between the beginning of August and the end of September, the Urban Planning services and the various political forces that make up the City Council worked on improving the documents that will serve as the basis for the tender to be launched, namely:
- in an effort to include the different migrant communities that have settled in Martim Moniz in the participatory process during the ideas competition, with the public presentation of the winning entry also to be held in English;
- in providing a "Social and Demographic Characterization Report" of Martim Moniz to the teams that will participate in the contest (Martim Moniz is one of the most multicultural areas in Lisbon, where communities of different nationalities coexist);
- in the adoption of public space solutions that promote the integration and landscape enhancement of the Martim Moniz Shopping Center, the Mouraria Shopping Center, the Hotel Mundial and other buildings in the Square;
- on the stipulation of a 30 km/h speed limit in the future Plaza;
- in the inclusion of the Tower of Pella in the intervention area.
Temporary Solution
Since the future Martim Moniz Square is only expected to be ready in three to four years, it will be developed a temporary solution for that public space in order to make it more dynamic, namely the creation of a cultural program, the opening of the public toilets, and the reinforcement of cleaning and maintenance of the space - as can be read in the proposal that the Town Councilor, Joana Almeida, took to the city council meeting last week. This temporary solution was one of the demands of the PCP.
The communists promoted, at the beginning of November, an open debate at Martim Moniz Square to publicly clarify its position on the issue and listen to the interested population. The moment culminated with the presentation of an amendment proposal, which was also discussed and voted on in the last city council meeting (it was rejected with only four votes in favor, from the PCP, BE, and Citizens For Lisbon), as an alternative to Joana Almeida's proposal - that is, if the communists' proposal got the majority of councilors, it would be the one that would go ahead to the detriment of Moedas' team.
Besides a temporary solution for Martim Moniz Square, the PCP's councilmen, João Ferreira and Ana Jara, proposed more public participation, with the holding of technical debates aimed at deepening the guidelines that would serve as a basis for the elaboration of the projectand the constitution of a Local Municipal Technical OfficeThis is a multidisciplinary approach that could organize and shape these participatory technical debates. Basically, in the communists' opinion, the local authority should not launch a contest of ideas, but rather define the idea it wants for the square - with the involvement of the population and local structures - and use the public contest only for the execution of the concrete project. You can read the PCP proposal below.
PCP against
During the debate promoted in Martim Moniz, Ana Jara said that the program that serves as the basis for the launching of the ideas contest "does not reflect the participatory process" so far about the Square by having "rather vague and unrealistic molds". "We run the risk of coming up with ideas that won't be feasible and will be forever unrealizable"he said, remembering the parking lot and the subway infrastructure under the Square that generate "difficulty in implementing a garden here". Ana Jara also showed concern about the possible disarticulation between the proposal that will be chosen and "the realities of Martim Moniz"He said he regretted that there was no in-depth social survey of the migrant and multicultural population that makes the whole area dynamic.
In the meeting promoted by the communists, some local associations participated, such as Morar Em Lisboa (which asks that no "a technocratic project that does not respond to the concerns of the population that lives and appropriates Martim Moniz"), Renovar A Mouraria (said "the City of Lisbon must take into consideration all the material that was collected" in recent years in the participatory process), CaracolPop (which lamented the "overparticipation of some groups and underparticipation of others"and said that "we can't think about Martim Moniz and Almirante Reis without thinking about downtown and what we are going to do with automobile traffic".) and the Arroios Neighbors (who reinforced that "the discussion has to start with the people" of the area and that "only after if we know what we want does it make sense to launch the contest").
As announced in July, for Martim Moniz Square, an "open and barrier-free" garden is planned, for people of all ages and cultures, that integrates with its surroundings, helps mitigate heat waves by offering shade and water, and contributes to improving pedestrian circulation and air quality. You can learn more about what's on the table here.
