ABSTRACT
This chapter approaches the debate over "comparative urbanism" from a theoretical perspective by reviewing relevant comparative experiences in urban Africa and from an empirical perspective by focusing on a particular case study: the West African urban corridor from Abidjan to Lagos. It reports on a mapping experiment conducted to locate and visualise the borders of the urban in different contexts. The chapter focuses specifically on the Abidjan Lagos corridor, which appears to be an excellent terrain for understanding such large-scale processes of urbanisation. The material turn complements the scholarship on urban Africa, which has revealed how informality and immateriality shape the lived experience of the African urban environment. The author's work aims to complement these contributions by focusing on the materials that are transversal and common to all the mechanisms of urbanisation observed in West Africa (and, more broadly, all around the urban world).
