Africa. Big chance. Big change.

Abstract

Africa Big Change Big Chance shows the architecture and transformations that are taking place in Africa. These are changes that concern the control of large numbers and show enormous movements of people, the pressure caused by urbanisation, the incongruous use of natural resources and territories. Transformation, Big Change, and possibility, Big Chance, set the register of the opportunities available today for a better and sustainable future for Africa. Africa will be the space of a new modernity, where to erect a different universal, cosmopolitan, global culture. The enormous modification of the physical environment in Africa shows the traces, even problematic ones, of new infrastructures, the impact of large dams, solar and wind farms, large reforestation projects, to stop the desert, which are a prelude to the conquest of new lands. The Africa of the village is becoming the Africa of the cities. The African urban model is difficult to read and classify. The mental devices and strategies of urban planning are ineffective. It is possible that the city of the whole, the African megalopolis, is an operational breeding ground for alternative solutions to the contemporary global city.