Who belongs in a city? | OluTimehin Adegbeye
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 12.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 August 2018
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
Underneath every shiny new megacity, there's often a story of communities displaced. In this moving, poetic talk, OluTimehin Adegbeye details how government land grabs are destroying the lives of thousands who live in the coastal communities of Lagos, Nigeria, to make way for a "new Dubai." She compels us to hold our governments and ourselves accountable for keeping our cities safe for everyone. "The only cities worth building, indeed the only futures worth dreaming of, are those that include all of us, no matter who we are or how we make homes for ourselves," she says.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Audio. |
| 0:05.0 | This talk features writer and activist Alutumann Adegbaye, recorded live at TED Global 2017. |
| 0:12.0 | Cities are like siblings in a large polygamous family. |
| 0:18.0 | Each one has a unique personality and is headed in a distinct direction, |
| 0:23.9 | but they all have somewhat shared origins. Sometimes I think post-colonial cities are like the |
| 0:30.1 | children of the two least favorite wives who are constantly being asked, ah, why can't you be |
| 0:34.7 | more like your sister? |
| 0:42.4 | The why of cities is largely the same, no matter where they are. |
| 0:46.6 | An advantageous location that makes trade and administration possible. |
| 0:51.2 | The potential for scalable opportunities for the skilled and unskilled alike. |
| 0:55.0 | A popular willingness to be in constant flux, |
| 0:57.0 | and of course, resilience. The how of cities, however, as a whole other story. |
| 1:01.0 | How are they run? |
| 1:02.0 | How do they grow? |
| 1:04.0 | How do they decide who belongs and who doesn't? |
| 1:08.0 | Lagos is my home. |
| 1:11.4 | You can always find the Nigerians by following the noise and the dancing, right? |
| 1:16.2 | Like any major city, that place is a lot of things, |
| 1:20.4 | many of which are highly contradictory. |
| 1:23.5 | A public transportation doesn't quite work, |
| 1:25.5 | so we have these privately owned bright yellow buses |
| 1:28.0 | that regularly cause accidents. |
... |
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