CREATIVE CITIES IN AFRICA, critical architecture and urbanism

240pp., illus., paperback, Cape Town, 2023

A collection of essays on creativity in nine African cities: Durban, Johannesburg, Maputo, Nairobi, Ville Fantôme, Lubumbashi, Dakar, Douala and Dalaba.

Contributions include:

"Johannesburg: The Nelson Mandela Bridge as a sign of urban transformation" by Mfaniseni Fana Sihlongonyane

"Durban: Expressions of sociocultural identities in the architecture of the Surat Hindu Association" by Sushma Patel

"Maputo: Monumentality and architectural discretion" by David Morton.

Noëleen Murray holds a Research Chair in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria. From 2015- 2019 she was Director of the Wits City Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in Critical Architecture and Urbanism. Her books include Desire Lines – space, memory and identity in the postapartheid city (2007); and Becoming UWC, reflections, pathways and the unmaking of apartheid’s legacy (2012). Her book, Hostels, Homes Museum, memorializing migrant labour pasts in Lwandle South Africa, co-authored with Leslie Witz (2014) was awarded the Michael M. Ames Award for Innovative Museum Anthropology by the Council for Museum Anthropology of the American Association of Anthropologists.

Jonathan Cane is an A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Oceanic Humanities for the Global South at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER), University of the Witwatersrand. He is the author of Civilising Grass: The Art of the Lawn on the South African Highveld (2019).