Another Day of Life: Spatial Practices and Arbitrary Detentions in Luanda, Angola

Abstract

In March 2013, the Angolan National Police arbitrarily and illegally detained four people in the capital city of Luanda during the course of an eviction and demolition. Two of them were Angolan nationals and the other two were foreign researchers duly authorized to remain in Angolan territory. Putting to use an unpublished report made for local media outlets, this article contextualizes and describes these events in order to provide an explicitly non-scholarly account of the risks, perils and hazards faced by spatial research practitioners in such a context, with the aim of allowing for reflection on the articulations between architecture, activism and urban politics.

Keywords:

• police action
• evictions
• Luanda
• Angola

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paulo Moreira

Paulo Moreira is a Ph.D. candidate at the Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University. His research sets out to understand the nature of postcolonial Luanda, Angola, where an overwhelming course of urban regeneration is leading to the destruction of entire neighborhoods. The investigation is looking particularly at one of the city's most central (therefore most at risk) informal settlements, Chicala. Paulo has been interacting with local institutions and organizing community actions with dozens of students and hundreds of residents. He established a research cluster at a local architecture school in order to learn and create the ideal conditions for others to understand the issues at hand. Outcomes arising from the investigation are seen as “devices” exemplifying how architects and urban practitioners can contribute to create a kind of collective memory of a place. Paulo has been living in Chicala and central Luanda for a total of six months.

Ricardo Cardoso

Ricardo Cardoso is a Ph.D. candidate in City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Titled “The Crude Urban Revolution: Finance, Planning and Petro-Capitalism in Luanda,” his doctoral project looks at the multiple processes of intense urban transformation this city has been going through over the past couple of decades. Proposing that these mark the distinctive character of Angolan petro-capitalism, the objective is to consider the particular logics through which relations between economy, state and society are increasingly articulated in the production of urban space. In order to investigate such issues, he has conducted extensive fieldwork in several geographical and institutional sites across the city. When in town, Ricardo has always been a resident of Chicala.