Urban design for the global south : ontological design in practice

Global South cities, like all contemporary cities, tend to be designed around a core modern configuration of asphalt, glass, concrete, cars and mobile citizens. Postcolonial modernisation has brought with it a mandatory system of major thoroughfitres, often including a freeway, cutting through the cityscape from an international airport to a downtown area of concentrated semi-rise corporate buildings. It has ushered in traffic lights, roundabouts and private-property markets. It has re-ordered nature, determining the run-off directions of rainwater, the gradients of rising ground, and the courses of creeks. In summary, for aU of the political gestures to social heritage, local nature and indigenous colour, and whatever the aesthetic Colltcllt of the ensuing built-environment, the dominant design regime is predominantly abstract modern in its form.