Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning Ricardo Cardoso has won the 2023 IJURR Best Article prize for  “BLOCOS URBANISM: Capitalism and Modularity in the Making of Contemporary Luanda” (written with Jia-Ching Chen and Henrik Ernstson).

This article draws on research conducted in Luanda, Angola to reflect on the organization of oil extraction, modalities of modernist city planning, and the proliferation of cement blocks in the making of new urban forms. This insightful article develops the concept of blocos urbanism to reveal how oil extraction off the coast of Angola becomes cement, housing, and infrastructure for the people of Luanda. Offering a fine-grained analysis of the economic, social, and spatial changes underway in the Angolan capital, this article vividly connects the materiality and spatiality of the city to seeming distant machinations in the global economy.

Read more at the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research