Envisaging New Urban Futures for Kinshasa

Thursday, 24 February 2011 – 2 pm

7 pm
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Filip de Boeck, Leuven
Organized in co-operation with the Cologne African Studies Centre (CASC) at the University of Cologne

(Event in English)
This lecture addresses the tensions between life as lived on the ground by millions of urban residents in Kinshasa and the official attempts which are currently being launched by the Congolese government to create a new -but exclusionist- urban environment. In order to illustrate this tension two concrete cases are introduced: a first case focuses on current modes of ‘informal’ urban expansion and random occupation of space in the city. The second case deals with the development of a new urban project, the ‘Cité du Fleuve’, which fully illustrates the official vision of Kinshasa’s urban future.Mapping Kinshasa, 2010 Department of Architecture and Urban Planing UGent