Gallery Entry
The Cost of a City
By Busingye · UG
The Cost of a City explores the hidden environmental price behind urban development. The image presents two realities that are physically connected but rarely seen together. On one side is a modern, growing African city, representing development, housing, roads and infrastructure. On the other is a degraded landscape where sand is extracted from riverbanks, wetlands and surrounding ecosystems using uncontrolled and inefficient methods. Sand is one of the basic materials from which cities are built, yet the places from which it comes can remain invisible to the people who consume it. The work asks a simple question: what does the landscape lose when the city grows? I created the piece using AI as a visual tool, but the idea, environmental concern, composition and message came from my own experience of observing development and the demand for construction materials in Uganda. I deliberately chose realism rather than fantasy because I wanted the environmental damage to feel immediate and believable. My main creative choice was to place development and degradation within the same visual story rather than treating them as separate issues. The contrast is intentional: organized urban growth against disorganized extraction; constructed landscapes against damaged natural ones; immediate economic value against long-term ecological cost. I also chose not to portray development itself as the enemy. Cities need materials and communities need economic opportunities. The deeper problem is how those materials are obtained. The artwork therefore imagines the tension between human progress and environmental responsibility rather than offering a simple good-versus-bad narrative.