Challenges to think about the city, territory, place. Shared experience between Mozambique, Brazil and Portugal

Abstract

There are several challenges for those who today build, produce and reflect on cities, territories and places, given the different intersections, dimensions and possible scales, but also the specificities of each historical-geographical context. From a critical and reflective approach, based on the decolonial turn, and taking into account the growing urban socio-spatial and territorial inequalities, we seek to overcome imposed standards and recover local knowledge, highlighting the dynamics of bodies, subjects and groups, so often subjugated to thought and practice dominant in the Global North. Three researcher-teachers from Brazil, Mozambique and Portugal cross academic teaching, research and extension experiences in order to contribute to the construction of another way of apprehending and understanding the dimensions of spatial and territorial production, focusing on the province of Maputo, in particular the capital, Maputo, and the district of Boane. It starts from in loco research, project workshops and a close dialogue with local communities, but also from other teaching experiences, to identify and break, based on practice, pre-established paradigms and hierarchies. The notions of city, territory and place are discussed and revised, seeking to understand the current urgencies and absences, as well as other ways of overcoming the processes of segregation and inequality.

Key-words: Maputo, urban theory, university tripod, decolonial critique.