AFRICAN SPECULATIONS

This exhibition explores the recent proliferation of speculative urbanization activities across the African continent. Despite the urgent demand for urbanistic upgrades throughout much of Africa, the myriad proposals that characterize these physical urbanization activities are rarely oriented toward those populations actually in need. Rather, exogenous models of settlement and infrastructure are being imported into wholly incongruous contexts with little regard for the realities of their destination. African Speculations considers these activities in the context of recent speculative building pursuits undertaken in places like Spain, Ireland, Dubai and China during the first decade of the 21st century, paying particular attention to the severe social, environmental and political consequences that emerged from the failure of these antecedents.
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The exhibition displays selections from a critical survey of more than 100 territorial-scale speculative urbanization projects proposed or undertaken throughout Africa since the height of most recent prior global real estate boom and bust in 2005. Each proposal, at more than 300-hectares in scale, shares a set of common characteristics that allow it to be defined as a “new town.” Yet beyond these similarities, the examples can be categorized under nine distinct urban typologies: new national capitals; technology/industry-driven cities; new financial centers (CBDs); middle-class housing estates; social or subsidized housing programs; tourist and entertainment enclaves; luxury housing estates; the occasional radical redevelopment of existing fabric; and what can be characterized as greenfield mega-cities.
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African Speculations offers a detailed explanation of nine selected case studies—one per development typology—drawn from across the African Continent. These case studies describe the rhetoric employed to justify the need to undertake these projects; the existing landscapes and ecosystem services they will inevitably denude; the myriad actors involved in their conception and construction; and the series of irrational actions and transaction undertaken to bring them to fruition.

This research is the product of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. It has been generously supported by a University of Pennsylvania University Research Foundation grant; a University of Pennsylvania China Research Engagement Fund grant; and by the Department of Landscape Architecture at Penn Design.The research and associated work products shown herein are the exclusive intellectual property of the University of Pennsylvania, unless otherwise noted. The work has been produced by the following: