This article addresses colonial built heritage in the urban landscape of Platô, Praia’s historical center. It is based on field work conducted by the authors in 2017. The aim of this article is to define the extent and rate of change in the urban landscape of Platô, from Cape Verde’s independence in 1975 to 2017. The authors focus mainly on the following traces of material colonial built heritage: architecture, streets, symbolic elements and public spaces, while simultaneously describing their immaterial dimensions. The analysis is preceded by a historical overview, which includes the stages of Praia’s spatial development. The authors argue that the colonial legacy in the urban landscape of Platô is constantly changing in functionality and meaning, and is progressively disappearing due to rapid social, economic, and political changes combined with a lack of adequate measures on the part of the country’s authorities to preserve its colonial built heritage.

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The aim of this article is to indicate the features of contemporary urban agriculture present in the contiguously built-up areas of Havana. Using an exploratory and classification approach, the authors draw on fieldwork and a prior analysis of satellite and aerial imagery, first to characterize the spatial distribution of urban gardens and then to point to their main intrinsic features, including the methods and organization of production and the functions performed. The research conducted shows that urban agriculture is distributed across the city in an uneven fashion, with the main concentration in districts of lower-density urban construction, which reflects the availability of land resources intentionally left between buildings by modernist planners. The most common production technique applied is organopónico, or organoponics. However, the material commonly used to construct the bordering walls is asbestos, which may pose a significant threat for both producers and consumers. Two case studies are analyzed to exemplify different approaches to organic food production.

Through structured comparison, this article seeks to present the different approaches to urban agriculture in the cities of Singapore and Kigali. The former is seen as a model ‘smart city’ worth following worldwide, while the latter is frequently referred to as the ‘Singapore of Africa’. The research conducted was divided into two stages. The first one was desk-based and included the analysis of satellite and aerial images along with the analysis of legal documents regarding land ownership and urban agriculture management. The second one was based on field work carried out in 2019 in both cities and comprised the mapping of areas encompassed by urban agriculture, the collection of photographic documentation, field observations, as well as semi-structured interviews. The research was summarized in line with a comparative analysis of institutional and legal framework of urban agriculture and policy towards its development; spatial features of urban agriculture, including distribution, location, and area; as well as inherent features of urban agriculture, including systems of production, main crops, production methods, and functions. The process makes it clear that despite the fact that urban agriculture is considered in planning documents of both cities, the scale of the activity and the approach towards it differ markedly. In Singapore, the authorities support mainly the high-technology and land-efficient solutions, with other, low-profit forms of agricultural activity being pushed out from the urban space. In turn, in Kigali, where the scale of agricultural activity is incomparably greater, the inhabitants enjoy a certain freedom to make use of unused land in cultivation, which increases their food security and enhances their ability to cope with external stresses.

This article examines the fate of colonial monuments in Africa during the post-colonial period, especially the monuments that the Portuguese erected in Bissau in West Africa. The discussion is preceded by a detailed analysis of the sources that describe the iconoclasm of colonial monuments in selected African cities and a thorough description of the field studies conducted by the authors in Guinea-Bissau in 2020. As new African states replaced former colonies, the removal of European monuments in their capitals became a widely discussed topic. Some expressly political colonial monuments were removed at the time of formal decolonization, others have fallen down over the years, and yet others still stand. What distinguishes Bissau from every other postcolonial capital in Africa is that, while all its colonial monuments were dismantled after 1973, most of the plinths on which they stood have remained. These empty plinths are a symbol of decolonization – sui generis monuments of dismantled monuments. They speak volumes about the nature of the transformations that have taken place in recent decades. The new way of commemorating people and events in the symbolic and political landscape of Bissau, viz. murals created on the grassroots initiatives of young Bissau-Guineans, is also examined.