Description
Book SynopsisProtracted economic crises, accelerating inequalities, and increased resource scarcity present significant challenges for the majority of Africa's urban population. Limited state capacity and widespread infrastructure deficiencies common in cities across the continent often require residents to draw on their own resources, knowledge, and expertise to resolve these life and livelihood dilemmas. DIY Urbanism in Africa investigates these practices. It develops a theoretical framework through which to analyze them, and it presents a series of case studies to demonstrate how residents invent new DIY tactics and strategies in response to security, place-making, or economic problems. This book offers a timely critical intervention into literatures on urban development and politics in Africa. It is valuable to students, policymakers, and urban practitioners keen to understand the mechanisms and political implications of widespread dynamics now shaping Africa's expanding urban environments.
Trade ReviewThis lively and important new collection pushes the study of the politics of urban development in African cities in to new terrain. A must-read for students of the African city. * Claire Mercer, London School of Economics, UK *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I: Conceptual Framing 1. DIY Urbanisms Old and New 2. DIY Urbanism in Distressed Cities in Africa 3. Reconnaissance Discourse of DIY and Urban Living in Nigeria 4. DIY Urbanism in an African Context and its Potential as a Collaborative Placemaking Tool for Bridging Africa’s Urban Infrastructure Deficit Part II: Case Studies 5. Political Economy of Community-led Security Provisioning in Urban Africa 6. The Production of Urban Space through Multi-scaled Political Networks in Lagos, Nigeria 7. Historicizing Precarity and DIY Urbanism in Accra, Ghana 8. Exploring Street Informality as Design Method: Experiences from Nigerian and Ghanaian Cities 9. Self-made Urbanism Handbook: The Case of Freetown, Sierra Leone 10. Resistance or Utopia? DIY Eco-communities in Durban, South Africa 11. Disability and Urbanism in Malawi 12. DIY Urbanism in Boom and Bust: a Perspective from Africa’s Copperbelt Conclusion
