Urbanist at Large. Iterating an Urban Sensibility

The STIAS Fellowship will be used to define a new field of research for the next four years. During the past five years my research explored the potential for sustainable infrastructure transitions in African cities, alongside explorations of the politics of city-making. Through the findings of these two tracks of investigation it has become clear that most African cities suffer from an institutional vacuum to harness grounded knowledge to stimulate innovation with regard to adopting a generation of infrastructure systems that are low carbon, labour intensive and affordable to the majority of urban residents. Against this backdrop I am trying to scope what the research and practice domains of city-level innovation ecosystems in Africa might be through in-depth interviews with various urban pioneers across many African cities interlaced with a critical literature review. This inquiry feeds into a broader investigation on alternative urban imaginaries across the global South that will manifest as a co-edited Handbook in 2027.