Overview

Research on rural space is often neglected by the various disciplines that are interested in the built environment and on social space. However, to what extent does it make sense that emergence and the future are understood mainly through research on metropolises and mega-cities? Regardless of the increasing urbanization of humanity, half of humanity still lives in small villages and towns. Are these spaces not changing? Are these spaces not designed and planned in ways that are novel and creative? This roundtable discusses to what extent such gaps in the knowledge are due to the legacies of colonial and developmental rationalities. In particular, the roundtable will discuss to what extent the very opposition between urban and rural was formed as part of the projects of colonialism and development, and is becoming inoperative if we become attentive to actual lives, and to the concrete spatialities of circulation. This roundtable is organized by the exploratory research project “Regulating the Colonial Rural: Wartime Villagization in Late Portuguese Colonialism” based at the Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT).


Bio notes

Tiago Castela

Maria Paula Meneses

Gonçalo Santos 

Paul Jenkins: Paul Jenkins has worked for the last five decades on a wide range of aspects of the built environment: architecture, construction, housing, planning, urban design and wider urban studies. This has been in in professional practice, policymaking, teaching/training and research – in a wide range of private sector, non-governmental, local & central government, international aid, community-based organisations and academic institutions. Much of this has focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, where he has lived half of his working life, in Malawi, Botswana, Angola, South Africa and especially Mozambique.

A major focus of his academic work has been on widening and deepening social engagement in the production of the urban built environment, with an emphasis on the low-income majority. He has published widely and just before his last senior academic employment, as Head of School of Architecture & Planning in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg he completed a major inter-disciplinary research programme which was the basis for his 2013 book entitled: “Urbanization, urbanism and urbanity in an African City: home spaces and house cultures” (Palgrave MacMillan).

Now retired, he lives mostly in Maputo, where he continues to be engaged in urban interventions and is still active in research as an Emeritus Professor of Architecture Research (University of Edinburgh) - most recently examining the impact of a growing middle class on the Sub-Saharan Africa urban fabric, and co-authoring the forthcoming book (Routledge, 2023): “Order and Disorder in urban space and form”.