UrbanoScenes sets out to explore, through a post-colonial epistemological lens, the construction, reproduction and contestation of imaginaries of urbanisation—focusing on Portugal, Angola and their transnational relations. It does so by focusing on how the society/nature dichotomy—and its derivatives, eg colony/metropolis, urban/rural, human/technology, modern/pre-modern, development/underdevelopment, North/South—informs dominant imaginaries and (re)produce socio-spatial relations of power. The working hypothesis being that the forms of (structural, cultural, state) violence/injustice that are inherent to global urbanisation are legitimised, reproduced and justified by the normative framing provided by such imaginaries, UrbanoScenes investigates alternative imaginaries co-existing with dominant ones. It does so from genealogical, comparative and future-oriented perspectives, building at the intersection of three fields of research so far largely disconnected from each other: - critiques of the ever-increasing influence of urban imaginaries (eg green, healthy, smart, creative, safe) in urban policy/discourse; - debates in post-colonial and critical urban studies on the global nature of the process of urbanisation; - world-ecology critiques of the persistence of the society/nature dichotomy in discourses around the Anthropocene. UrbanoScenes has three general goals: i) theoretical, to (re-)theorise urbanisation by unpacking the socio-political centrality played by imaginaries of urbanisation through a postcolonial perspective; ii) normative, to offer future-oriented insights to rethink urbanisation paradigms in the Anthropocene; and iii) policy-relevant, to produce knowledge useful to reframe urban policy. These goals are pursued through three specific objectives: a) to set out a genealogy of post-colonial imaginaries of urbanisation, as they are evident in urban theory, policy, fiction and architecture, with a multi-scalar focus, from global ideas to local actualisations; b) to understand how these imaginaries are understood and made operational by local policymakers; and c) to produce policy-relevant alternative scenarios for the cities under study. Inspired by post-colonial and global urban studies, UrbanoScenes adopts comparative case study analysis, through three scales: global, in imaginaries within urban theory and (developmental) programs by international institutions (eg UN-Habitat, World-Bank, IMF, EC); (trans)national, with focus on Portugal, Angola and their relations, in the travel of ideas through urban/developmental policy, architecture and fiction (cinema and literature) in the post-colonial age; and metropolitan, focusing on local policies and imaginaries in Lisbon, Luanda and Huambo. The cases are selected on a threefold rationale: 1) Portugal and Angola have remained marginal to urban theorisation; 2) they offer material to explore the travel of ideas, from persisting effects of developmental paradigms imposed during colonisation, to the ‘boomerang effect’ (Césaire) and uneven development in the post-colonial age; 3) Lisbon (undergoing counter- and re-urbanisation), Luanda (fast-growing megalopolis) and Huambo (mid-size urbanising city) represent cases of ‘maximum variation’ (Flyvbjerg) as regards urbanisation patterns.

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With the objective to increase the research activity directed towards the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the possibility of associating scientific projects with the Sustainable Development Goals is now available in Ciência_Iscte. These are the Sustainable Development Goals identified for this project. For more detailed information on the Sustainable Development Goals, click here.