Detroit, or Berlin. 1 We nevertheless decided to embark on this venture, because we were confronted with a lack of critical approaches to mine closure (see next section). Due to this decision, the discussion of the existing literature and the explication of our approach took slightly more space than usual theory sections. Readers interested in our empirical findings may directly jump to sections three, four, and five, where we present the outcome of our research in Obuasi (Ghana) in 2017 and Fria (Guinea) in 2012, 2014and 2017 (Anonymized, 2018.Research consisted of altogether seven months of participant observation and interviews over a period of five years, partly based on… [Anonymized] (Anonymized, 2018). In 2017, we conducted another 60 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (miners, managers and other city dwellers; local administrators, politicians, and activists; farmers around the mines) in Fria and Obuasi and did small quantitative studies on changes of municipal budgets, household incomes, and enrollment rates due to mine closure.Until today, most of the literature on mine closure is business-related and is aimed at 'proper' (World Bank and International Finance Corporation, 2002: v) or 'sustainable' (Lawrence, 2006: 298) mine closure (see next section). If the industry would consider the insights of these studies when constructing new mines, many pitfalls of mine closure could be avoided.However, even if all of the proposed measures would be implemented, African mining remained far from 'sustainable', as long as the concerned local and national population does not effectively take control of the exploitation and the processing of its own resources.Unfortunately, control relations have worsened over the last 40 years. In an article on the right to the city, which will strongly influenced this article, Harvey (2008: 31) states that in the past three decades of restoring class power to rich elites, cities increasingly developed into 'fortified fragments, gated communities and privatized public spaces kept under constant surveillance'. These changes happened much faster and much more radical in the developing world, where cities seem to become 'microstates' (cf. the notion of the enclave; Ferguson, 2005), separated into wealthy neighbourhoods and shanty towns, 'where water is available only at public fountains, no sanitation system exists, electricity is pirated by a privileged few, [and] the roads become mud streams whenever it rains' (Balbo, 1993; cf. Harvey, 2008: 31). This description of the 1990s comes quite close to the situation we encountered in the mining town of Fria in Guinea, one our two case studies. Prior analyses showed that the mining town