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Five Points for Conceptualising Place-Based Approaches to African Urban Planning: An Introduction

par Faldi, Giuseppe ;Fisher, Axel ;Moretto, Luisa
Editeur scientifique Faldi, Giuseppe ;Fisher, Axel ;Moretto, Luisa
Référence African Cities Through Local Eyes - Experiments in Place-Based Planning and Design, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, Ed. 1, page (1-27)
Publication Publié, 2021-10-16

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Résumé :

In the face of the ever-evolving and emerging urban, environmental and socioeconom-ic transformations of Africa cities, a growing body of literature advocates for new at-titudes towards urban planning theory and practices. Within this frame, place-based approaches are a recurring trope vested with the bivalent capacity to challenge the preconceptions of African urbanity inherited from colonial-era and Western modernist thought, and to bring out alternative knowledge grounded in the concrete reality of African cities. However, this notion has multiple and oft-diverging meanings, poten-tially nullifying its conceptual and operational validity. This introductory essay puts forward five place-based specifics based on an extensive literature review and against which the contributions collected in this book are tested: (1) the shifting meaning of place from a changeless physical entity to a dynamic social-cultural one, (2) the added value of including local to expert knowledge into multiple knowledge systems, (3) the collaborative or non-collaborative nature of place-based practices and the range of tools and methods for implementing them, (4) democratisation and empowerment ob-jectives in place-based approaches and (5) the role of institutions in establishing place-based initiatives in the long term. As a result, while reinstating the relevance of contextuality in urban planning and design for African cities, this essay calls into question some undesirable aspects of place-based approaches: the limitations of case study-based empiricism, romanticising informal and bottom-up initiatives, and justify-ing the historical retreat of institutionalised public action from responsibility for steer-ing urban change.In the face of the ever-evolving and emerging urban, environmental and socioeconom-ic transformations of Africa cities, a growing body of literature advocates for new at-titudes towards urban planning theory and practices. Within this frame, place-based approaches are a recurring trope vested with the bivalent capacity to challenge the preconceptions of African urbanity inherited from colonial-era and Western modernist thought, and to bring out alternative knowledge grounded in the concrete reality of African cities. However, this notion has multiple and oft-diverging meanings, poten-tially nullifying its conceptual and operational validity. This introductory essay puts forward five place-based specifics based on an extensive literature review and against which the contributions collected in this book are tested: (1) the shifting meaning of place from a changeless physical entity to a dynamic social-cultural one, (2) the added value of including local to expert knowledge into multiple knowledge systems, (3) the collaborative or non-collaborative nature of place-based practices and the range of tools and methods for implementing them, (4) democratisation and empowerment ob-jectives in place-based approaches and (5) the role of institutions in establishing place-based initiatives in the long term. As a result, while reinstating the relevance of contextuality in urban planning and design for African cities, this essay calls into question some undesirable aspects of place-based approaches: the limitations of case study-based empiricism, romanticising informal and bottom-up initiatives, and justify-ing the historical retreat of institutionalised public action from responsibility for steer-ing urban change.