The Kigali After: A New City for the End of the World

FAIN: FEL-281688-22

Samuel Shearer
Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)

Research and writing leading to a book on contemporary urban planning and environmental sustainability in the city of Kigali, Rwanda. 

This project is about daily life during one of the 21st century’s most daring experiments with design, capitalism, and statecraft: The Kigali City Master Plan. This Plan is a series of international ventures in design and marketing that are aimed at converting Kigali, Rwanda from a post-conflict city to an optimized hub of global finance and tourism. Written by firms in Singapore and the United States and financed by private capital, The Kigali City Master Plan is part of a global agenda to re-make African cities as “sustainable” solutions to the twin crises of economic and ecological catastrophe. In this way, The Kigali City Master Plan envisions a future where the environment is protected, foreign investors and capital are free, but Rwandans are not. This project is therefore organized around a question that interrogates our assumptions about what cities are, how they work, and for whom they function: How do people produce urban futures in spaces that are designed against them?