Contesting one’s place remains central to confronting the lingering impact of colonisation and apartheid, emerging as it does out of the intermingling of our environments, histories, languages and experiences. In this volume, architects, anthropologists, artists, urban planners, activists and historians examine the ways in which people are rethinking, repurposing and reusing colonial and apartheid architecture and infrastructure. They seek to engage with ways in which history, art and architecture practices contest and subvert these protracted conditions in terms of social justice, development, conservation, heritage, land reclamation and urban renewal.

The focus is on colonial environments in different parts of South Africa and Africa to understand the history of disputed places and responses of remembrance, communal consideration, revival and conflict. In recent years, public awareness of the physical and environmental reminders of this past has been sharpened by sporadic campaigns and ongoing disputes around land, gentrification, repatriation and heritage. Globally, there has been a wave of public outcry and contestation about the place of racist names and statues in public spaces, litigation over abandoned and toxic sites, with calls for removal and restitution as an integral part of decolonisation. And there has been recognition of the lived experiences, knowledge and activities through which people and communities build their heritage.

In this context, questions about the place of colonial and apartheid planning and architecture and their past acquire salience and urgency in the present.