The Christian Science Monitor

Reshaping colonial cities, African architects reclaim history – and the future

For decades, crammed neighborhoods of matchbox houses and tin shacks lined the edges of South Africa’s cities like grand human filing cabinets: places the white government could store the vast quantities of black labor it needed to keep the country going.

When these "townships" of workers – forbidden from living in the cities proper – got too crowded, too diverse, or too revolutionary, the government would often simply tear them down and start over.

Today, however, these architectural afterthoughts have become the sites of some

Reimagined spaces'A new vision of this country'

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