In his lecture, Lista presented a series of proposals for bringing some colonial and precolonial forms of planning back into current use, based on a habitat project he completed for Togo, Benin and Ghana last year.

The congress centred on highly topical concerns for planning in Africa, such as the influence of segregationist colonial urban planning on the subsequent evolution of society, the colonial legacy in the Maghreb, the disintegration of precolonial populations, new cities like Dodoma, and the specific evolution of cities of Portuguese origin, which were the last to be decolonized.

Organized by the Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território (Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning) of the Universidade de Lisboa and the International Planning History Society (IPHS), the congress was attended by researchers from about twenty African and European countries. Contrary to what the title of Lista's lecture may suggest, a significant part of his lecture focused on the most contemporary issues for planning in Africa today.

Dr. Antonio Lista, a geographer with a PhD in urban planning, is one of the lecturers on the Master in Regenerating Intermediate Landscapes programme at the ESARQ School of Architecture. He also collaborated with the School of Architecture on the Repensar Encamp (Rethinking Encamp) project.