Public lecture – African New Cities: Speculation and World-Making from Urban Peripheries
Join us for a public lecture by Liza Rose Cirolia (African Center for Cities, University of Cape Town)
African New Cities: Speculation and World-Making from Urban Peripheries
Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2025, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Location: Architecture Lecture Hall (ALH), Dar Al-Handasah Architecture Building, American University of Beirut
Event Organizers: The Beirut Urban Lab and the School of Architecture and Design, Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, American University of Beirut
Discussant: Mona Harb (Beirut Urban Lab, SoAD, AUB)
This event is open to the public
About the talk
African New Cities: Speculation and World-Making from Urban Peripheries
The contemporary wave of master planned “new cities” across the world has attracted the celebration and critique of urban studies scholars, activists, and decision-makers. In Africa, the drivers and aesthetics of new towns have transformed; while earlier waves tended to act in service of the political or business interests of these nations, current projects are inspired by experiments in the Middle East. These projects have often seemed garish and “out of touch with reality” against the backdrop of under-resourced planning departments, rampant informality, and high levels of inequality. In this lecture, the theme of African new cities will be explored, taking an intentionally "ambivalent" view of new cities in Africa, with the hopes that such a perspective has wider applicability. The lecture will begin by considering the value that African experiences – seemingly distinct and peripheral to global debates – have for other urban geographies. The talk will then turn to the case of a particular new city in the capital city of Somalia, built by a trans-local telecommunication company with the aims of attracting the diaspora returnee and investor. This case, will be argued, presents a more ambivalent view of African new cities, showing them not only to be sites of finance speculation, but also of experimental world-making.
Bios
Liza Rose Cirolia is an Associate Professor at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. Her research and teaching focuses on technological transitions, specifically in the context of Africa's urbanization. Her most recently scholarship engages with themes of urban statecraft, speculation, world-making, with a keen focus on finance, planning, and infrastructure. In addition to publishing widely, Liza is a corresponding editor for Urban Studies Journal, Platforms & Society and Finance and Space. She currently teaches two of core modules for ACC’s Master in Sustainable Urban Practice, an executive program aimed at mid-career urban professionals (Sustainable Urban Infrastructure and City Finance). She is also the co-founder of the UTA-Do African Cities workshop, an annual “summer school” which brings together scholars, artist and activities to advance southern thinking and practice.
Mona Harb is Professor of Urban Studies and Politics at the American University of Beirut where she is also co-founder and research lead at the Beirut Urban Lab. Her research investigates governance and territoriality in contexts of contested sovereignty; urban activism and oppositional politics; and how people make collective life in fragmented cities. She is the author of Le Hezbollah à Beirut: de la banlieue à la ville, co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’i South Beirut (with Lara Deeb), co-editor of Local Governments and Public Goods: Assessing Decentralization in the Arab World (with Sami Atallah), and co-editor of Refugees as City-Makers (with Mona Fawaz et al.). She serves on the editorial boards of MELG, IJMES, EPC, and CSSAME.