Construction companies, developers and designers from China have a growing influence on African cities. One of the most impressive examples of the Chinese impact on urban Africa is Kilamba Kiaxi: a gigantic new sattelite city for 500 thousand people just outside the Angolan capital Luanda, built by the China International Trust and Investment Corporation. The area is a copy-and-paste of residential areas in booming Chinese cities like Shijiazhuang, Chengdu or Xi’An.
Does China's experience with rapid, large-scale urbanization come in handy in Africa? Can the Chinese simply copy their urban model to African soil? And what are the consequences? That is the topic of the evening on Thursday 19 June in Pakhuis de Zwijger.
Journalist Michiel Hulshof (Tertium, Amsterdam) and architect Daan Roggeveen (MORE Architecture, Shanghai) have been working together in the Go West Project since 2009, studying emerging mega cities. They make exhibitions, give lectures, write articles and organise symposia around the world. In autumn 2011, they published their book How the City Moved To Mr. Sun about emerging Chinese mega cities. They are currently studying the export urban models from China to Africa. In Pakhuis de Zwijger they will share stories, pictures and the first results of their research. They will present a special edition of the magazine Urban China dedicated to African cities, that they co-edited.
We will have a guest talk by Skype with Huang Zhengli from Dar es Salaam, editor of Urban China. She worked in UN Habitat in Kenya where she focused on Kenyan towns and slums. Everlyn Otieno is the Director of the Urban Planning Department of the city of Kisumu. She just finished her Masters degree at Tongji University in Shanghai.
The program will be moderated by Natasja van den Berg (Tertium) and is entirely in English.
Admission is free. RSVP by clicking the red button RESERVEER on top of this page.
This program is a co-production of Tertium and Pakhuis de Zwijger.
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