Centro de estudos sobre a Mudança
Socioeconómica e o Território

UrbanoScenes sets out to explore, through a post-colonial epistemological lens, the construction, reproduction and contestation of imaginaries of urbanisation—focusing on Portugal, Angola and their transnational relations. It does so by focusing on how the society/nature dichotomy—and its derivatives, eg colony/metropolis, urban/rural, human/technology, modern/pre-modern, development/underdevelopment, North/South—informs dominant imaginaries and (re)produce socio-spatial relations of power. The working hypothesis being that the forms of (structural, cultural, state) violence/injustice that are inherent to global urbanisation are legitimised, reproduced and justified by the normative framing provided by such imaginaries, UrbanoScenes investigates alternative imaginaries co-existing with dominant ones. It does so from genealogical, comparative and future-oriented perspectives, building at the intersection of three fields of research so far largely disconnected from each other: - critiques of the ever-increasing influence of urban imaginaries (eg green, healthy, smart, creative, safe) in urban policy/discourse; - debates in post-colonial and critical urban studies on the global nature of the process of urbanisation; - world-ecology critiques of the persistence of the society/nature dichotomy in discourses around the Anthropocene.

UrbanoScenes has three general goals: i) theoretical, to (re-)theorise urbanisation by unpacking the socio-political centrality played by imaginaries of urbanisation through a postcolonial perspective; ii) normative, to offer future-oriented insights to rethink urbanisation paradigms in the Anthropocene; and iii) policy-relevant, to produce knowledge useful to reframe urban policy. These goals are pursued through three specific objectives: a) to set out a genealogy of post-colonial imaginaries of urbanisation, as they are evident in urban theory, policy, fiction and architecture, with a multi-scalar focus, from global ideas to local actualisations; b) to understand how these imaginaries are understood and made operational by local policymakers; and c) to produce policy-relevant alternative scenarios for the cities under study. Inspired by post-colonial and global urban studies,

UrbanoScenes adopts comparative case study analysis, through three scales: global, in imaginaries within urban theory and (developmental) programs by international institutions (eg UN-Habitat, World-Bank, IMF, EC); (trans)national, with focus on Portugal, Angola and their relations, in the travel of ideas through urban/developmental policy, architecture and fiction (cinema and literature) in the post-colonial age; and metropolitan, focusing on local policies and imaginaries in Lisbon, Luanda and Huambo. The cases are selected on a threefold rationale: 1) Portugal and Angola have remained marginal to urban theorisation; 2) they offer material to explore the travel of ideas, from persisting effects of developmental paradigms imposed during colonisation, to the ‘boomerang effect’ (Césaire) and uneven development in the post-colonial age; 3) Lisbon (undergoing counter- and re-urbanisation), Luanda (fast-growing megalopolis) and Huambo (mid-size urbanising city) represent cases of ‘maximum variation’ (Flyvbjerg) as regards urbanisation patterns.