The need for social distancing and better sanitation could leapfrog development of African cities into a more sustainable future.
This is according to Duncan Bonnett, Director of Market Access & Research at Africa House, and research partner of exhibition organiser Messe Muenchen South Africa. He says that, while Africa’s architects and planners have long been pushing for greener, smarter better designed urban spaces, the COVID-19 pandemic may help fast-track moves to better living spaces.
New opportunities arise from disruptions
Speaking ahead of the bauma CONEXPO Africa trade show, Bonnett says “The pandemic has certainly caused delays and disruptions across construction and infrastructure development, but there are some silver linings for the sector, and for Africa as a whole.”
These, he says, included a new need for the realignment of developments such as commercial and hospitality spaces, the reconfiguration of retail developments and the reimagining of towns and cities.
“We could see redevelopment and remodelling of spaces, the development of new warehousing and logistics hubs as e-commerce really takes off; and the growth of retail distribution infrastructure closer to outlets and consumers,” Bonnet says.
“Another opportunity lies in the complete redevelopment of urban spaces in South Africa and across Africa.”
“The pandemic is highlighting how difficult it is to maintain safe social distancing and ensure water and sanitation for townships and informal settlements, for example. This is an opportunity for investors, governments and private sector to reconfigure how Africa lives reimagining housing, green spaces, sanitation, power, and the work environment to ensure that both urban and rural spaces are resilient to disruption such as pandemics.”
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Protests, Violence, and Political Change
(nonviolent protest activity seeded news agendas on civil rights, and elite-led legislation fueled even more favorable media coverage)
The Black protests of the US civil rights era influenced the national political agenda via the media coverage they received.
Omar Wasow was a child of the civil rights movement. His mother worked in Upward Bound, a federal program that helps young people, especially Black youth, get into college. His father participated in voter registration drives in Mississippi as part of the Freedom Summer campaign, in the same cohort that included James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the activists murdered in 1964 by the Ku Klux Klan.
And yet Wasow came of age in the 1980s, when punitive, law-and-order politics accompanied historic increases in the US prison population. After launching BlackPlanet, the Black social networking site that predated Facebook, and spending a dozen years there, Wasow found himself still puzzling over the rise of hyperpunitive politics in America. How did the civil rights victories of the mid-1960s segue into the harsh, tough-on-crime 1970s and ’80s?
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