What makes a city anyway?

What have the Congo and Cardiff got in common? Although thousands of miles apart, one man, eminent Belgian anthropologist Filip De Boeck, links these two parts of the world as he shares his experiences of how people interact with their urban environment, however rudimentary and informal, as is the case in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, to a UK audience as part of the Urban Legacies II: Another New Babylon? conference on October 4^th at the St David’s Hotel and Spa in Cardiff Bay.

Renowned the world over for his studies of private and public spaces in an urban context in Africa, and in particular in Kinshasa, Filip De Boeck brings with him his experiences of how people with a cultural perception which is very different from our traditional western attitudes to architecture and the built environment, classify urbanity.

The city of Kinshasa has a population of 6 million yet urban planning as we know it ceased after independence in the 1960s, when the population was less than 500,000, and subsequent civil war and economic collapse. Nevertheless, the city works on a number of different levels despite the huge population growth and an inefficient and often absent infrastructure.

As the programme director of the Africa Research Centre and Chair of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Professor Filip De Boeck is actively involved in teaching, promoting, coordinating and supervising research in and on Africa.

In his most recent book Tales of the Invisible City, a joint book project with photographer Marie-Françoise Plissar, De Boeck outlines how an almost invisible infrastructure exists focussed on personalisation (marking private space and image building), which is yet very real for those who live in it. This book is the basis for a travelling exhibition which is currently on show in Johannesburg in South Africa.

Filip De Boeck, says, “When you look at what we westerners view as a traditional city, take Cardiff for example, we tend to focus on physical buildings as a focus for the workings of a city and it people. Imagine removing the main shopping centres, the Castle or City Hall, as is the case in Kinshasa and what you get is a fascinating place where human movement and even speech become forms of building a city.

“The breakdown of infrastructure in itself creates opportunities for networking. I call this the ‘Possibilities of the Impossible’, in the sense that what is happening in Kinshasa is far from an ideal environment for anybody to live in, yet the majority continue to live full and varied lives.

“In short, for us living in the West we accept physical buildings as having an important form and function but it may be worth thinking of how we would adapt if our traditional perceptions were removed. Would we still be able to call ourselves citizens and would be able to positively interact with each other and adapt to exist? “

Since 1987 Filip has conducted extensive field research in both rural and urban communities in D.R. Congo (ex-Zaire). His current theoretical interests include local subjectivities of crisis, postcolonial memory, youth and the politics of culture, and the transformation of private and public space in the urban context in Africa.

Following its successful introduction two years ago, the second Urban Legacies Conference will carry on exploring artistic and creative ways to regenerate ignored and hidden urban spaces. In this year's Conference a number of professionals with a variety of approaches to this challenge meet again to debate the role of art, architecture and cultural expression in shaping the public realm and effecting positive change, focusing on the revival of contemporary post-industrial cities from an international perspective.

Urban Legacies II will further investigate themes, which emerged from the first Conference in May 2004 that, together with commissioned artist's projects under the title "Ain’t no Love in the Heart of the City", explored the developing role of artists in the regeneration of neglected city areas and the increased application of cross disciplinary architectural, artistic and urban planning practices.

More information on the Urban Legacies II is available online on www.urbanlegacies.co.uk.

ENDS

For further information please contact Wiard Sterk at CBAT, on 029 2048 8772 or Rhodri Ellis Owen at Cambrensis PR on 029 20 257075