ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to ask why planning history matters, and raises the question of colonialism. By the late 20th century, urban population growth and the inability of the state to extend urban controls over the majority of the population finally drew the attention of multilateral bodies to the urban planning crisis. The chapter briefly outlines the state of the field of planning history, noting the obvious dominance of South African material, but also reflecting on the reasons behind the general paucity of academic output on Africa and on the distorted focus of the material on colonial legacies. It makes a case for a revisionist African planning history agenda based on wider temporal and thematic mandates. The chapter proposes a temporal recasting of the historical record that gives greater attention to the differential legacies of the past and weighs more carefully those eras of significant urban expansion.
