Void Urbanism

Unbuilt New Cities and State Formation in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Bibliographic Data

ID21086754
AuthorsPatrick Dieudonné Belinga Ondoua (0000-0002-0653-3866, corresponding author)
Year2026
Publication date2026-07-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Urban and Regional Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0309-1317 • E-ISSN: 1468-2427
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-2427.70123
OpenAlexW7167505141
LanguageEN
References cited52

Based on an analysis of the planning process behind Kitoko City in the Democratic Republic of Congo—a new city project officially launched in 2019 but never implemented—this article examines the political, social, and spatial effects generated by urban initiatives that remain at the stage of intention. It investigates how such unbuilt projects can nonetheless structure power relations, reactivate conflicts of interest, trigger anticipatory land speculation, reconfigure institutional practices and hegemonic struggles, and shape collective narratives around modernity, national resilience, and patriotism. Far from being mere technical or financial failures, these projects function as strategic tools of government, endowed with their own performative capacity. They act as political fictions that organize social expectations, crystallize imaginaries, and contribute to the reconfiguration of state legitimacy. To capture this dynamic, the article mobilizes the concept of ‘void urbanism’, which designates a form of action on the city rooted in announcement, anticipation, and latency—yet producing very real effects on territorial configurations and mechanisms of power. This theoretical stance seeks to reintegrate unbuilt new cities into a broader reading of statecraft and urban production in Africa and beyond. Finally, the article broadens the analytical scope of emptiness in urban studies by shifting attention away from ex‐post voids (or voids within )—vacant buildings, abandoned infrastructures, and underused urban spaces, phenomena often captured through notions such as ghost cities and skeleton urbanism—and towards what I call ex‐ante voids (or voids without ): cities and infrastructures that exist but without walls, without bricks, and without any materialization, only in plans and models. It argues that these cities‐in‐waiting are profoundly productive: they participate in the oblique production of territory, the orchestration of collective expectations, the management of uncertainty, and operate as full‐fledged governmental technologies through which state power is enacted and consolidated

Control reconfiguration · Democracy · Hegemony · Politics · Power (physics) · State (computer science) · Urban planning · Urban politics · Urban and Rural Development Challenges · Urban Planning and Governance · Water Governance and Infrastructure

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access