Not a single one of the significant urban and other societal challenges facing humanity today can be answered within the confines of one discipline, or solely based on ideas from one part of the world. This has been the guiding philosophy since Cityscapes Magazine was founded in 2010.
For the last decade, Cityscapes has worked with a vast network of journalists, photographers, researchers, policymakers, and activists across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The mission has been to tell the complex stories of what urban challenges look like on the ground as well as the nature and cost of real, sustainable, and equitable urban change.
The annual is primarily invested in presenting more diverse perspectives on what being urban means to counter the prevailing status quo, which fails to adequately engage the voices and ideas on this from the global South.
Established in 2010 as part of the African Centre for Cities, the range of work has grown to include a range of publishing projects, exhibitions, events, and some convening activities. The team undertake self-initiated or commissioned curatorial projects in collaboration with partners in various parts of the world, focused on both studying and working to address global urban challenges from multiple perspectives, with a particular focus on the South.
The goal of the work is to provide and promote a more expansive array of ideas on how we are thinking about the future, the built environment, and urbanisation. Cityscapes aim to encourage the emergence of a new cohort of urbanist and built-environment professionals whose thinking is not limited to dominant Western-leaning conceptions of what the contemporary city and future should be.
