ABSTRACT
Along the various lines that could run from Dakar to Jakarta, there are many different cities. Some are ancient, others relatively new. Some are located in areas criss-crossed many times by various armies, migrants, sojourners; others are somewhat isolated from the major circuits of trade and geopolitical maneuvering. Many different histories, positions, social compositions, and forms of articulation to the world are at work. What I am interested in here is not so much a comparison but finding ways to take the differences into consideration or temporarily hold any random collection of them in view all at the same time.1 This is not a matter of finding out what they have in common; this is not an effort to find deep structural correlations. Instead it is to imagine a situation where Dakar, Lagos, Nairobi, Dubai, Karachi, Bangkok, and Jakarta-just to take a few to make an example-are “neighbors” in a single metropolitan space, and what that experience might be like for people who would live within it.2
