The promises, poetics and politics of verticality in the really high African city

Cane, Jonathan

doi:10.1080/21681392.2020.1850305

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Understanding such landscapes requires not only horizontal analysis of Nairobi's rapid growth but a new kind of vertical thinking that draws connections between hierarchies of power, hidden depths and new heights of the city (Cane 2021). This is far from a top-down approach.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather than presuming that fake buildings are simply representative of corrupt practices or inert manifestations of a murky political economy, I explore what it is that materials, stuff and substances do: how they intervene in urban possibilities and limitations, shaping not only the character of urban growth but also forms of public critique. The allusions to icebergs and the hidden depths of Nairobi's construction industry reveal a vertical dimension to this process, further problematizing topics of concealment and invisibility in the shift from a horizontal plane to the perpendicular, from the subterranean to the high-rise (Cane 2021). I show how an emerging vertical materiality in Nairobi's built environment drives debates about deception, (im)moral economies and popular suspicions of power, complicating longstanding discourses in African studies about the power of the double and the relationship between surface and underneath (Mbembe 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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City of icebergs: materiality, surface and depth in Nairobi’s built environment

Smith

2023

Africa

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This article considers the materiality and substance of the built environment in Nairobi in light of concerns about surface, depth and the power of the unseen. Taking Nairobi’s high-rise construction boom and a recent spate of collapsed buildings as its starting point, it examines how longstanding ideas about the hidden and invisible dynamics of African cities do not operate in a realm distinct from the material world, but often stem from it: the stuff from which the city is made generates thought and action. High-rise buildings are sometimes described as ‘icebergs’ (structures where much of what is going on is under the surface) or as ‘fakes’ (buildings that superficially promise something, but that are qualitatively and morally suspect). Exploring Nairobi’s construction industry from sites of building collapse, I show how an emerging vertical materiality in the city’s built environment drives debates about deception, (im)moral economies and popular suspicions of power, complicating discourses about the relationship of surface to underneath. I examine how Nairobi’s frail buildings induce anxieties about the seen and the unseen, illuminating how the materials of verticality are entangled in economies of deception.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

City of icebergs: materiality, surface and depth in Nairobi’s built environment

Smith

2023

Africa

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“…In front of Baloji and De Boeck’s camera, the doctor explains that this tower ‘will become a model for everyone… a useful tower, inhabited and habitable’ 9 . This concrete tower is pure utopia, deriving directly from the doctor’s imagination (Cane 2021). Yet his dream remains largely unrealized, its construction stalled due to lack of funds, transforming his utopian vision into a dystopian ruin (see Hoffman 2017 for Monrovia; Archambault 2021b for Maputo).…”

Section: Conclusion: Concrete Utopia/dystopiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Building concrete futures: materiality and urban lives in West Africa

Choplin

2023

Africa

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In West Africa, concrete is increasingly taking hold of physical landscapes, popular consciousness, and everyday conversations. Ubiquitous and pervasive, concrete is now an integral part of West African urban materiality and cultural identity. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s theory on the production of space, I consider this material as both a product and a producer of urban space. By tracing flows of building materials across the West African urban corridor linking the cities of Abidjan, Accra, Lomé, Cotonou, Porto-Novo and Lagos, this article proposes to understand how cement and concrete (re)shape African built environments, human lives and urban futures. It examines three dimensions of this concrete urban materiality: its links with capital, its social meanings for inhabitants-builders and its ecological impacts. I conclude by highlighting the potentials, limits and contradictions raised by this now contested material, thus shedding light on the complexity of the production of urban spaces in West Africa.

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“…Butt, 2021), and more recent literary imaginations particularly those centring around African high-rises (e.g. Cane, 2021; Gastrow, 2020; Mututa, 2018). There also remain possibilities, as with recent work developing explicitly interdisciplinary, practice-driven approaches to the subsurface (Royal Holloway, n.d), for collaborations between scholars and creative practitioners in experimenting with urban life above ground.…”

Section: Luxury Vertical City Limitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vertical Horizons: Dealing with luxury urban skies

Harris,

Wolseley

2023

Urban Studies

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There has been a conspicuous growth in the height and extent of luxury urban development in the 21st century. This has been accompanied by important critical analyses exploring how this upward construction has created new vertical social divides and landscapes of power. This article argues, however, that there are spatial and methodological limitations to the way luxury urban skies have tended to be framed and pursued. Through a focus on the decisions taken in producing the 2017 meditative film Vertical Horizons by Tom Wolseley, the paper offers an expanded agenda for engagements with elite vertical development. This film juxtaposes views of London and Western Europe’s tallest skyscraper, the Shard, from different vantage points, with contrasting narratives about the building. Vertical Horizons seeks to use its focus on the Shard to open up more imaginative experiments with high-rise landscapes, and better recognition of the potential complicities in responses to the gleaming façades of contemporary urbanisation. The paper posits that more multi-sited, creative and reflective approaches, such as those pursued in Vertical Horizons, are required in efforts at levelling with the social and symbolic power of urban vertical luxification.

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The promises, poetics and politics of verticality in the really high African city

Cited by 4 publications

References 28 publications

City of icebergs: materiality, surface and depth in Nairobi’s built environment

City of icebergs: materiality, surface and depth in Nairobi’s built environment

Building concrete futures: materiality and urban lives in West Africa

Vertical Horizons: Dealing with luxury urban skies

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