Qui construit la ville - Who builds the city?

In the period between the 1958 Brussels World Exhibition and the 1973 global oil crisis, the ‘mirror cities’ Brussels and Kinshasa underwent a drastic urban transformation. Both modernization projects aimed to reimagine these cities as the capitals of their respective continents. While these transformations have received widespread scholarly attention, the living and labour conditions of the many construction workers who effectively built these highfalutin urban projects remained overlooked. 

This collaborative workshop between Ghent University , Vrije Universiteit Brussels, and Université Kongo (Mbanza Ngungu) addressed this gap by sharing and publicly presenting preliminary results of on-going oral history research. Together with master students of all three institutions, dr. Robby Fivez, dr. Simon De Nys-Ketels, and prof. Trésor L. Bungiena conducted multiple interviews to trace the realities of urban construction sites, uncovering narratives regarding labour conditions, migratory backgrounds, and hierarchies of skill and company rank.