The Urban Question in Africa

A timely exploration of the world's most rapidly urbanizing region The Urban Question in Africa explores the uneven and contested nature of the urban transition on the continent, offering fresh insights into the implications of climate crisis, geopolitical changes, and other contemporary meta-trends. Addressing Africa's urbanization as well as its broader development, the authors present an original framework that points towards more generative urban transitions by conceptualizing cities as sociotechnical systems constituted by production, consumption, and infrastructure regimes. Based on extensive fieldwork in multiple countries and regions of Africa, The Urban Question in Africa is a valuable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, geographers, and urban planners alike. "The complexities of Africa's urbanization processes and challenges - present and future - clearly dissected and presented in an easy to read and understand style. This book presents the different faces of Africa's urbanization which have been neatly crafted together in a single edited volume and offers the reader the different perspectives of viewing urbanization on the continent, certainly a must read for urbanists and all interested in Africa's present and future." --George Owusu, Professor of Urban Geography, Institute of Statistical, Social & Economic Research (ISSER)/Dean, School of Social Sciences, University of Ghana "This lively text takes on the most cogent themes of today in urban Africa, while addressing the long-running debate over whether cities in Africa can generate development or simply operate as parasites. This will be a valuable text for courses on urban Africa, African development, and globally-oriented urban-economic geography. The authors make a strong case for the utility of a sociotechnical systems approach in African urban studies." --Garth Myers, Center for Urban and Global Studies, Trinity College, Hartford, USA