What kind of commerce for the city? The case study of Lisbon and the urban dimension of its commercial spaces. 1970-2010

There has always been an inseparable, congenital, and even constitutive relationship between urban centres and commerce. Over time, public commercial spaces have never lost their shared similarities of being a mix of interaction, city expression, urban architecture, and an extension of the space and public purposes of the urban centres. However, during the twentieth century, this relationship changed considerably. This was when people began to feel the need to regain some kind of shared dimension where the spaces for trade and social interaction could coexist. Any project that has as its purpose the aim of defending and improving urban quality cannot avoid considering the idea of re-designing the city with commerce as an "agglutinating" urban element.