Public space and placemaking in Sub-Saharan Africa

This report is produced by Living Cities as part of the SymbioCity Kenya Programme with the aim to inspire and give new perspectives on public space and placemaking in the African context. 
We emphasize placemaking as a process to understand, design and program public spaces by putting people and communities ahead of efficiency and aesthetics. The outcome in terms of the public space as such is of course important but we also highlight the social and cultural opportunities that lie in the process of developing public space - the act of placemaking.
This report highlights current placemaking efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa and reveals a broad range of public space projects, methods and initiators. All have in common the emphasis of creating positive change for people and communities through the transformation of a physical place. The cases give many lessons on what has worked well and less well, and how to implement this type of change in an African context. The report also gives a brief introduction to public space and why it matters, and how to develop better public spaces through processes with a significant involvement by local communities.

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Funded by: Embassy of Sweden to Kenya
Name of Client: SKL International
Year(s): 2018
Countries: Sub-Saharan Africa