Title: Cities in contemporary Africa /
Authors: Murray, Martin J.; Myers, Garth Andrew.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillian,
Year: 2007
Subjects: Cities and towns Africa; City and town life Africa.; Urban policy Africa.; City planning Africa.; Urbanization Africa; Cities and towns; City and town life; City planning; Economic history; Geography; Social conditions; Urban policy; Urbanization; Africa Social conditions; Africa Economic conditions; Africa Geography.; Africa History, Local.
Abstract: This book offers a broad range of scholarly interpretations of the evolving forms, the changing dynamics, and the unexpected surprises that characterize contemporary African cities. It wrestles with important questions concerning how large numbers of people without regular work nevertheless find ways to survive and even prosper. It balances investigations of particular cities in sub-Saharan Africa with considerations of a diversity of topics, themes and multi-city comparisons, including themes in: culture, imagination, place and space; political economy and work livelihoods; and urban planning and governance. The collection is both theoretically informed and empirically grounded. Aimed at mid-level undergraduate students, these essays, taken as a whole, provide an understanding of what is happening in African cities today, and why.
Contents: Douala/Johannesburg/New York: cityscapes imagined / Dominique Malaquais -- Internal migration and the escalation of ethnic and religious violence in urban Nigeria / Daniel Jordan Smith -- (Re)configuring the city: the mapping of places and people in contemporary Kenyan popular song texts / Joyce Nyairo -- Johannesburg fortified [photo essay] / Martin J. Murray (text) ; Juanita Malan (photography) -- Douala: inventing life in an African necropolis / Basile Ndjio -- Economic globalization from below: transitional refugee trade networks in Nairobi / Elizabeth H. Campbell -- Changing African cityscapes: regional claims of African labor at South-African owned shopping malls / Darlene Miller -- Cars are killing Luanda: cronyism, consumerism, and other assaults on Angola's postwar capital city / M. Anne Pitcher with Aubrey Graham -- Luanda, Angola [photo essay] / Aubrey Graham (photography) ; M. Anne Pitcher (text) -- Human capital, embedded resources, and employment for youth in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe / Miriam Grant -- Gender relations, breadwinning, and family life in Kinshasa / Guillaume Iyenda and David Simon -- South African urbanism: between the modern and the refugee camp / AbdouMalique Simone -- Planning, anti-planning, and the infrastructure crisis facing metropolitan Lagos / Matthew Gandy -- City life in Zimbabwe at a time of fear and loathing: urban planning, urban poverty, and operation Murambatsvina / Deborah Potts -- Social control and social welfare under neo-liberalism in South African cities: contradictions in free basic water services / Greg Ruiters.