Participation and Place-making in Dissonant Times

africanCities, Edgar Pieterse, Essay, expanding design practices, No Density, Politics and economics

Accessibility, African Cities, City Planning, Collaborative Architecture, Community, Contemporary society, Design, Developing policies, development, Economics, Empowering society, Environment, Essay, Inclusivity, Landscape, Megacities & High Density, NGO, Participation, Political & Economic Approach, Power, Public Space, Resources, Slums, Social cohesion, Society, Sustainable, Territorial Approach, united nations, urban, Urban governance, Urban growth, Waterfront

This essay is part of the Developing Urban Futures publication, documenting new research on African cities carried out in the build-up to the 17th Urban Age conference in Addis Ababa.
Edgar, P. (2018). Place-making in Dissonant Times. In R. Burdett, P. Rode, & P. Griffiths, Developing Urban Futures (pp. 12-13). London: LSE Cities.

Edgar Pieterse is the Director of the African Centre for Cities. This is an abridged version of an essay appearing in Shaping Cities in an Urban Age.

Dissonance is the overwhelming condition of the current era. At a time when formal politics in multiparty democracies seem interminably stuck, over the past few years a supposedly ineffectual United Nations has been able to broker a series of path-breaking development agreements, of which the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda adopted in 2016 are the most ambitious. These agreements represent a fundamentally different political landscape within which tough social justice questions can be confronted more easily.