Urban Futures & Black Life: A Mini-Symposium
Part I: African Urbanism
Development experts would do well to remember that cities are made up of people, and not simply infrastructure. Focusing on Nairobi (Kenya) and Kigali (Rwanda), these recently published exciting works by a new generation of scholars of East African urbanism document this reality by explaining how ordinary inhabitants of African cities have used residential space, public transportation and sanitation to work around, and sometimes thwart, the grand schemes of urban planners to pursue goals that meet the needs of their own neighborhoods and communities. Experts and politicians often deem these unorthodox strategies to be “informal,” inefficient and often criminal, this panel tells engaging and revealing stories about how seemingly unschooled people with no credentials fashion dynamic lives in East Africa’s dynamically expanding cities.
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Part II: Diasporic Cities
This panel centers two urban cities in the postwar Midwest— Milwaukee and St. Louis—to consider the everyday social movements that haved meaningfully altered the urban landscape. Both presenters consider the interplay between urban space, racial governance, and Black creative agency across the Midwest. Attendees are invited reflect on how urban Black communities have sought to shape the cities that seek to shape them.
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