ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows that many studies of African cities have taken definitions of “city” developed from northern scholarly ideas and cities and used them to define what is city in Africa. It demonstrates just how difficult it can be to understand the precise arguments in ongoing debates. The book argues that against a straightforward integration of southern cities into urban studies as it is currently constituted. It examines what urban studies after the southern critique might entail, outlining three distinct and intellectually incompatible potential pathways: southern urbanism as a distinct field, a postcolonial world-of-cities approach which suggests the locatedness and limits of all knowledge and a global urban studies. Contemporary scholars have constructed awkward phrases such as “rural in the urban” that are typically only applied to residents of global south cities.
