There's a version of Campo de Ourique in every article about Lisbon now — the market, the brunch, the 'village feel' — and I read them the way you'd read a stranger describing your mother. Accurate, sort of. Missing the point, completely.
I was born in the hospital up the road and grew up two streets from the market when the market was a market: fish, fruit, a woman who cut hair in the back. My grandmother's flat is still there, with my aunt in it now. The 28 goes past the end of the street and I've never once thought of it as iconic. It's the tram.
What's actually good about the neighbourhood is that it's flat. Lisbon is a city of hills and Campo de Ourique sits on top of one like a tablecloth, so old people walk, and kids cycle, and you see the same faces for thirty years. The brunch places will come and go. The flatness stays.
I live four streets from where I was born and spend my weekends in Ericeira, which people find funny — the nurse who never left, the surfer who won't stay. Both are true. The tram goes both ways.