A long-standing debate in the urban studies literature emphasises the place of cities in the global cultural, financial and political economy. Traditional approaches to the study of world cities have typically left little room for the cities of the South or the more ‘marginal’ cities in the West. In this essay, I argue for a more inclusive theoretical and conceptual space that incorporates a broader range of urban situations through a comparative investigation of two cities: Lagos and Detroit. Though they are in some ways peripheral to the functioning of global capitalism, they remain central to its narrative. I therefore suggest that even as Detroit and Lagos undergo experiences of ‘wilding’ these processes represent an often unacknowledged aspect of ‘worlding’. The paper represents a preliminary attempt to centre African and post-industrial cities in the wider critical narrative of contemporary global urbanism.
Botswana has long been praised for its financial and political achievements. High economic growth rates and uninterrupted democratic governance since independence in 1966 have led to Botswana's labeling as the "African Miracle". Long before Botswana's emergence as a darling of Western development agencies however, Tswana elites and colonial officials also saw Botswana as exceptional: surrounded by states divided along racial lines, these individuals sought to construct a nation organized around principles of racial and tribal unity. Aspirations of non-racialism were to be exemplified in Botswana's newly constructed capital city, Gaborone. At the same time, underlying the planning vision for Gaborone was a competing set of narratives, practices and aspirations that undercut these lofty ideals and resulted in the creation of a city highly stratified by racial segregation. This essay identifies three complementary urban planning rationales that produced urban exclusion in Gaborone: the desire to build Gaborone as an administrative capital, borrowing from both colonial and indigenous Tswana traditions that privileged spatial divisions related to status and race, and the goal to build a "modern" urban center to lead Botswana into the future. These tensions divided the city in ways both familiar and unexpected and set the parameters determining who counts as a legitimate resident of the city. The paper therefore seeks to explore how a city founded on an ideal of racial unity instead became a site of stark division(s).
On 9 November 1965 Q. K. J. Masirethe eventual second president of Botswanapenned a memo for the Ministry of Home Affairs describing an outburst of violence that culminated in a near riot between Batswana and the Rhodesian labourers hired to construct Botswana's new capital city. 3 The dispute began mundanely enough. The initial spark came when a Motswana man emptied the contents of a water bucket carried by a foreign female laborer employed by the Costains construction company. Later that evening, her Rhodesian husband returned to Naledi, the squatter settlement where the standpipe was located, in order to protest her treatment. Shortly after arriving the confrontation escalated as he was thrown into a hut that was then (allegedly) set on fire. Though managing to escape the encounter unscathed, the next night the
Residents of African municipalities exhibit a lengthy and varied history of coping with conditions of pervasive precarity and uncertainty in the context of an unevenly present state. The climate crisis compounds these challenges. Based on case studies from across the continent, this introduction to the Special Issue on the Politics of Climate Action in Africa's Cities presents research oriented around questions of "do-it-yourself" urbanism, sustainable development, and climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts undertaken by socio-economically vulnerable citizens. It offers insight into how the urban poor respond to ongoing urban climate crises, the variable roles of an absent, ineffectual, or inattentive state, and the unequal power relations undergirding sustainability discourse and practice. It draws on a crossregional comparative perspective that centres conversations about urban theory and development in a (urban) world succumbing to mounting pressures from climate change, environmental precarity, and pervasive inequities.
Keywords African urbanism • DIY urbanism • Climate change • Urban marginality • Urban politics • Comparative urbanismCities everywhere increasingly contend with growing socio-economic inequality and environmental stressors. Meanwhile, the institutional shrinking of the state has diminished its ability to fulfil its traditional role as provider of public goods and everyday security (Brescia & Marshall, 2016;Ciplet et al., 2015). These broad trends, today shared across urban geographies of the Global South and North, however,
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