Urban Africa - Changing Contours of Survival in the City (Paperback, Illustrated Ed)

This title focuses on the complex social dynamics of human survival in African cities today, with case studies from Dakar, Addis Ababa, Cape Town, Kisangani, Jos, Zaria, Cairo and Marrakesh. It contains high quality scholarly material for students and researchers in African studies and Urban sociology. Many African urban dwellers have to find ways of making a living within cities dominated by powerful economic and political interests. This title explores how they negotiate the spatial practices, politico-economic processes and social relations that entangle place, identity and power in urban sites. While historically familiar links between countryside and city remain, these are constantly being reworked to give life to highly diverse urban formations. Meanwhile, African cities are being further fashioned through the geographically uneven dynamics of globalization. Institutional structures change rapidly, informal agreements flourish, and innovative ways of managing relationships are found. Urban change is not a process that easily managed or steered. What stability exists is itself the product of an enforced adaptation to instability.