The Forest and the City: interpretative mapping as an aid to urban practice in sub-Saharan Africa

What is it about?

Many African cities remain predatory centres of consumption lacking the infrastructure that makes cities work elsewhere. Research in Freetown, Sierra Leone, indicates that latent, local topographical and institutional resources can strengthen civic infrastructure in the process of place-making and thereby build confidence in city scale institutions. The paper asks what part cultural memory, embedded in the forested topography, contributed to the foundation and resilience of three urban settlements and whether this contribution can be sustained in the face of urban infrastructure developments such as rapidly expanding road networks. It describes how place-based resources are used by local residents to mediate the impact of city scale initiatives. However, they are fragile, hidden from a wider view and often ignored by city-scale practitioners. The paper concludes that in order to provoke a more fine-grained debate about civic infrastructure provision, urban practitioners should employ local survey and interpretive drawing techniques to explore place-based memory in support of a more inclusive and interconnected, nonpredatory African city.

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Why is it important?

Assembling a diverse contemporary African city dynamic requires that increasingly fragmented and often hidden place memories are revealed, protected and architecturally re-mediated. Interpretative architectural drawing practice can contribute to collaborative deliberations around future non-predatory African city making by helping to articulate and empower place-based communities in policy making at all levels.

Perspectives