ABSTRACT
In the wider academic literature, African cities carry a burden of exceptionality. As colonial cities, their dependent and divided urbanisms had marked them out from those of the colonisers whose cities, by contrast, were imagined to embody the creative energy of modernity. In the contemporary moment, it is the dystopic quality of cities in Africa which is often drawn into broad analyses of urban futures; to some commentators the crises and difficulties which beset many cities on the continent speak to the likely future of cities everywhere in noir visions of (usually) capitalist-induced decline (Davis, Koolhaas et al). Luckily, a growing body of work rising to prominence in urban studies is embedding a view of African cities as a diverse range of urban contexts, with histories, forms and social practices that are all distinctive and which potentially open up new ways of thinking about cities more generally (de Boeck and Plissart, Nuttall and Mbembe, Simone). In this spirit, the collection of essays in this volume brings a fresh perspective to the project of engaging with African cities on their own terms.
