The purpose of this thesis is to investigate attractiveness of a city and to answer the research question: “How is the attractiveness of the city of Lisbon perceived?” and four additional sub-questions regarding attractiveness of a city for different target groups, namely women and men, residents and visitors, female residents and male residents, and female visitors and male visitors.
This project developed a theoretical ground that consists of a list of twenty-seven attributes that measure the attractiveness of a city. A mixed methods research was conducted in this project and the methods chosen to collect the data were online survey and focus groups.
The results show that attractiveness of a city is a subjective concept and it is directly related to the city’s available attributes. More importantly, this thesis proved that attractiveness of a city varies depending on the target group or dimension analyzed. Therefore, women and men prioritized different perceived attributes, as well as residents and visitors, and there was also significant differences found between female and male residents’ perceived attributes and also between female and male visitors. This thesis contributes for future research as it developed a theoretical framework possible to be generalized and used to measure others city’s attractiveness. Additionally, this thesis’ results open a new area for future research that consists of the comparison between cities, either similar to Lisbon, such as southern European cities, or totally different, such as northern European cities.