Doctoral Dissertation Research: Exploring Environmental Design and Sustainable Development Strategies in an Urban Development Plan

共同PI Samuel Sheeller将在PI Charles Piot的监督下，探索如何在快速社会经济转型的背景下管理、辩论和实施城市规划项目。这项研究的重点是基加利城市总体规划，这是一个为期50年的城市规划项目，卢旺达政府及其规划伙伴将其称为可持续城市增长、环境设计和经济发展的典范。基加利城市总体规划由国际投资者提供资金，并外包给新加坡和科罗拉多州博尔德的建筑公司，是灵活形式的城市规划的象征，可以激活全球资本和专业知识网络。总体规划还承诺拆除该市目前的大部分建筑环境，以产生全新的东西：一个整体的城市项目，一个资本流动的载体，以及进入世界经济的入口。在这个过程中，数十万基加利居民将失去住所和工作场所。然而，令人惊讶的是，那些最容易失去家园的居民也与城市规划者和政府官员一起梦想着该计划承诺的更美好的未来。通过非正式访谈、参与者观察和对总体规划和相关媒体的批判性分析，本研究将调查这一悖论，并将研究城市增长实践与为大型规划项目提供重要能量的理想之间的关系。除了人类学，本研究还涉及城市研究、建筑和非洲研究方面的辩论。这项研究将考察社会、政治和经济过程是如何产生已建空间的。这项研究将使用人类学、地理学和政治经济学中现有的理论和方法工具包，就规划过程及其实施展开辩论，并询问基加利居民将如何分担建造新城市的社会成本。通过这样做，它的目的是在一个关键问题上产生知识：人类将如何居住在一个日益城市化的世界。这项研究也有助于人类学研究生的培养。

The Co-PI, Samuel Shearer, under the supervision of the PI, Charles Piot, will explore how urban planning projects are managed, debated, and implemented in contexts undergoing rapid socioeconomic transformation. The research focuses on Kigali City Master Plan - a fifty-year urban planning project that the Rwandan government and its planning partners call a model of sustainable urban growth, environmental design, and economic development. Financed by international investors and outsourced to architecture firms in Singapore, and Boulder, Colorado, the Kigali City Master Plan is emblematic of flexible forms of urban planning that activate global networks of capital and expertise. The Master Plan also promises to demolish much of the city's current built environment to produce something entirely new: a holistic urban project, a vector of capital flow, and an entrée into the world economy. In the process hundreds of thousands of Kigali's residents will lose dwelling and work places. Yet surprisingly, those residents who are most vulnerable to losing their homes also dream along with urban planners and government officials of the better future the plan promises. Through informal interviews, participant observation, and critical analysis of the Master Plan and related media, this research will investigate this paradox and will examine the relationship between urban growth practices and the ideals that provide the vital energy for large-scale planning projects.In addition to anthropology, this research engages debates in urban studies, architecture and African studies. The research will examine how built spaces, are produced by social, political, and economic processes. This study will use the theoretical and methodological toolkit available in anthropology, geography, and political economy to engage debates over the planning process and its implementation and asks how the inhabitants of Kigali will share the social costs of producing their new city. In doing so, it aims to produce knowledge on a crucial question: how humans will inhabit a world that is increasingly becoming urban. The research also contributes to the training of a graduate student in anthropology.