The seventh edition of Cityscapes is framed around the rubric of “futurity”.

What will tomorrow be like?

It will be more urbanised. It will also, agree various contributors, bear the imprimatur of China. “Whatever the case, China has, for now, become a far more prominent actor than others in the future-making of Africa,” asserts philosopher Achille Mbembe in an anchoring essay, “to the point where Africa is now not only a planetary question … but also and more specifically a Chinese question.” Contributors Philip Harrison, Yan Yang, Tanya Pampalone and Mary Anne Fitzgerald expand and complicate this assertion.