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Africa’s Urban Revolution
(2014)
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anonymous 3 years ago (last updated 3 years ago)Africa is undergoing a massive urban transformation, as seen by the number, size, and typology of mega, big, medium, and small cities on the continent. Although African cities precede colonial adventurism, the continent's urban transformation has been enhanced by the different colonial experiences, as little sleepy communities grew in size and number. Furthermore, massive rural-to-urban migration boosted the population of these towns and cities, and political edification transformed primate cities into megacities. As a result, it's not surprising that Africa, the world's least urbanised continent (at 40% urbanisation), has more people living in cities than Europe, Australia, Asia, the North, or South America. Unfortunately, the spectacular rate of urbanisation in Africa, as well as the accompanying number and density of cities, has failed to attract the necessary attention from scholars both inside and beyond the continent. The few who have dabbled in this field have a poor understanding of the proximal reasons for increased city growth, as well as the pattern, processes, and social and political-economic ramifications of such dynamics. This is why Urban Revolution provides a refreshingly unique and extensive look at the origins, growth, and rapid expansion of Africa's cities, as well as the transformation of some of them into megacities and the repercussions of such transformation. This edited collection of fourteen chapters looks at various aspects of Africa's urban revolution, from a kaleidoscopic analysis of the revolution to conflict and post-war transition in African cities, religion, transportation, planning, education, infrastructure, and economy, to urbanisation and policy, with a postscript on how to make the new urban transformation sustainable. These chapters, written by eminent scholars and urbanists, have been carefully selected to examine and document African urban transition experiences as attested to or manifested in governance or leadership structures, urban institutions to nurture and administer cities, technical capacities and capabilities, and financial solvency. As a result, the book's ultimate goal is to present the African urban revolution storey in a rich, informative, and participant/observer/performer perspective like never before. The purpose is to investigate the nature of the shift in population size and location, as well as the changes in settlement pattern, content, and aerial expanse that have resulted, and to analyse the implications for African policy and urban governance. The authors contend that the anti-urban knowledge bias on and about Africa is not only outmoded but also lacking in academic and/or professional credibility. The book accomplishes its objectives admirably. The impact of warfare on the modern African metropolis is discussed in Chapter Two. While wars are not always fought in cities, cities are frequently the unfortunate beneficiaries of enormous influxes of people uprooted by wars and their aftermath. Chapters three, four, thirteen, and fourteen look at the content and context of urbanisation in Sub-Sahara Africa, as well as its ecological footprints; the African economy, where poverty and informality reign, and especially where infrastructural inadequacies contribute significantly to the poverty of urban livelihood patterns and returns on investment; and the African economy, where poverty and informality reign, and especially where infrastructural inadequacies contribute significantly to the poverty of urban livelihood patterns and returns. Unfortunately, as Chapter 14 demonstrates, there are few effective urban strategies based on insightful new policies to address the majority of the issues raised by current urban transformation processes. According to Rakodi in Chapter 5, religion is both vital and crucial to the survival of urban Africans, giving socio-psychological equilibrium and economic survival. This is an important addition to the collection since its absence would have made a proper knowledge of the Africans in town impossible. Many African cities and towns have become food insecure as a result of in-migration and natural urbanisation, not because of a shortage of food, as Gushand Frayne claims, but because of a lack of access to food as a result of poverty, unemployment, and bad infrastructure. In the ongoing urban transformation/revolution drama, this then becomes a policy issue. As a result, rural-urban synergy and access facilitation through policy innovation are essential. In Chapters Seven, Nine, and Ten, the book examines sectoral aspects of the transformation process, such as transportation, planning law, and planning education. The importance of these sectors to the success of Africa's urban revolution may be seen in practice. Existing laws governing urban Africa are mostly colonial in origin and have seldom been contextualised to address contemporary urban concerns. Education and research, for example, should both boost urban Africa, but the opposite is also true. The writers of these chapters contend that the current urban revolution will not yield the required dividend of enhanced urban livelihood unless and until policy adjustments in these sectors are made to address the current urban reality, which is plagued by poverty and detrimental informality. Pieterse quotes poverty (which is connected with loss of freedom, death, illness, and pain) as the principal affliction of urban Africans in Chapter 11 using Kinshasa as a metaphor. This is because slums — another synonym for poverty — are home to more than two-thirds of urban Africans. As a result, the urban transformation has been a failure so far. This is a failure caused by African leaders' lack of understanding and contextualization of the urbanisation saga, the political and professional elite's use of authoritarianism and amplification of sectarianism, poor funding of urban programmes, poor response and inadequate understanding of urban challenges by various shades of urban civil society, and the general lack of understanding of urban challenges, the lack of accountability for urban programmes and projects in general Many of these issues may have been avoided if civil society organisations had understood the urban challenges in their proper context. There has been an intellectual and behavioural transition from resistance and aversion to understanding urbanisation and the expansion of African cities to a widespread acceptance of urbanisation as a permanent and irreversible phenomenon. This increased acceptance and understanding may result in more rapid strategic development. Africa, more than any other continent or region of the world, is the epicentre of this phenomenon. The book's biggest flaws are its lack of policy solutions for African urbanisation and its lack of attention to conflict cities. The majority of the chapters are capable of articulating significant and developing issues that African cities are confronted with. They rarely, if ever, offer practical suggestions for particular improvements. Instead, they offer somewhat nebulous theoretical solutions. Some of the proposals appear to be based on political ideology rather than empirical data or local requirements. Duminy, Odendaal, and Watson, for example, are more concerned with making education "progressive" than with its practical application for African social, political, and economic development (p.184-5). However, the penultimate chapters concentrate more on actual solutions to African urbanisation issues. Each of these, on the other hand, could have benefited from the application of a specific solution to their case study. The second point of criticism is that conflict cities are not discussed. Beall and Goodfellow write an amazing chapter in the book about how cities change from conflict to peace. They concentrate on towns in the African Great Lakes region, such as Kigali, Kinshasa, and Goma, which have undergone and continue to experience armed violence to some extent. However, the text does not provide adequate attention to this crucial topic. Many African cities are now undergoing wars, armed conflict, and rebel action. For readers to grasp how conflict leverages urbanisation to benefit armed conflict, these cities could have been adequately addressed. When reading about events in Bangui, Central African Republic, and Mogadishu, Somalia, this topic is important. This book by distinguished researchers has done a good job of attracting and focusing attention on the African urban transformation processes and patterns, which have been overlooked for a long time.- @samprajwala 3 years agoafrica This book comprise of fairly balanced arguments which are sometimes contrasting giving the author a balanced perspective on the trajectory of urbanisation in Africa. The facts of Africas rapid urbanisation are startling. By 2030 African cities will have grown by more than 350 million people and over half the continent's population will be urban. Yet, in the minds of policy-makers, scholars and much of the general public, Africa remains quintessentially rural. This lack of awareness and robust analysis makes it difficult to make a policy case for a more overtly urban agenda. As a result, there is across the continent insufficient urgency directed to responding to the challenges and opportunities associated with the worlds last major wave of urbanisation. Drawing on the expertise of scholars and practitioners associated with the African Centre for Cities, and utilising a diverse array of case studies, Africa's Urban Revolution provides comprehensive insight into the key issues - demographic, cultural, political, technical, environmental and economic - surrounding African urbanisation. he authors critically examine drivers of urbanization with urbanization processes carefully contextualized, e.g. by accounting for their historical roots, the roles of religion and post-war and conflict situations. The challenges and the potentially beneficial approaches for cities in providing an adequate food supply and distribution and accessibility through transport infrastructure are highlighted, as well as the need for accompanying political, institutional, legal, economic, educational and academic reforms. One of the book’s main messages is the complexities of Africa’s urban revolution, and the importance of understanding this in order to address the challenges and improve livelihoods and living conditions, especially of the urban poor.
- @samprajwala 3 years ago (last updated 3 years ago)AFRICA IN IT'S FUTURE Africa’s Urban Revolution. Susan Parnell and Edgar Pieterse Africa’s Urban Revolution aims to provide comprehensive insight into the key issues – demographic, cultural, political, technical, environmental, and economic – surrounding African urbanization. It encompasses the complexities of a continent that is slowly developing to become the next economic center of the global economy. Africa’s Urban Revolution is a fourteen-chapter volume edited by Susan Parnell and Edgar Pieterse. They argue that practitioners and scholars must sharpen their tools to deal with the startling facts of Africa’s rapid urbanization. The volume incorporates insightful case studies on climate change, food security, planning law and violent conflict, to position cities – medium and large – as the loci of effective development policies. most people know Africa based on its current conflicts, food scarcity and underdevelopment. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs states that African cities mass more than 414 million people, which is roughly 40% of the total African population. Their estimates expect that by 2030, 50% of Africans or 744 million will be residing in cities. This number increases to 1.265 billion or 60% of Africans by 2050 (p.1,7). With this dramatic increase in urban growth, academic researchers and public policy specialists do not focus enough on African cities. Editors Susan Parnell and Edgar Pieterse, alongside twenty-one other academic scholars, attempt to bridge the knowledge gap by writing on a wide range of topics that includes: proper urban planning for economic development, domestic and international environmental protection and response measures, access to education, religious expression through the city-based civil society, and many other important subjects. The first is that African urbanization has yet to be properly examined by developmental scholars, public policy researchers, and by people interested in African cities. Many African political leaders still encompass an idealism centering on rural development over urban development, which will hinder overall development during and after 2030. African cities already contain some of the most notable slums, with an average of 43% of city dwellers living in slums. This number will only increase given anticipated population growth figures. African leaders need to take the correct steps in urban expansion to bring the population and the environment into beneficial coexistence. In addition, there needs to be proper urban planning to develop necessary infrastructure for businesses, for example, a paved road system, reliable electricity, and clean water. Social goods such as education and health centers are also necessary to produce a skilled labor force. The book provides an excellent on how cities transition from a state of conflict to peace. They focus on cities in the African Great Lakes like Kigali, Kinshasa and Goma that have experienced and to some extent still contain some armed violence. Many cities throughout Africa are currently experiencing wars, armed conflict, and rebel action. These cities should have been better addressed for readers to understand how conflict uses urbanization to benefit armed struggle. This topic is significant when reading about events in Bangui, Central African Republic, Mogadishu, Somalia, and cities throughout South Sudan. In line with the narrative that “Africa is rising”, economic growth is assumed to flow from a burgeoning new middle class that increases consumer demand and promotes sectoral diversification. While it is of course important to address ways that “residents are structurally trapped” (p. 15), many of the chapters overplay the Africa rising narrative of cities as spaces for entrepreneurship and opportunity. In Chapter 11 Pieterse suggests slum dwellers incur the “highest transaction costs” – for they “come from messy, unsightly, stinking, foul neighborhoods” – and urban planning must instead harness the creativity of these “agents of slum urbanism”. The state’s lack of attention to urban problems is not seen as resulting from “external forces” but rather a bad attitude to urbanization marked by political self-interest. the governments are unlikely to leverage the finance on infrastructure investments necessary to meet existing needs, none of the contributors provide robust political solutions to deal with constrained and politically mismanaged public expenditure. However, cities are demonstrated to be vital sources of economic development. Turk (chapter four) suggests city-based agglomeration economies can increase the productivity of industry. Economic development is not solely consumer-driven but requires a large-scale productive base. However, the benefits of agglomeration are matched by their negative externalities, including direct effects on an overburdened transport infrastructure (chapter 7) and indirect effects of climate change (chapter 3). Beresford (chapter 9) provides an insightful examination of why reforms to planning law remain challenging in helping solve these problems. Planning law is largely inherited from colonial legislation that fails to incorporate citizen participation and continue to privilege the interests of developers and landowners. As socio-economic inequality grows, the issues of elite capture need to be “confronted squarely”. So long as urban policy is technocratic, the basic principles of law will be treated as superfluous. ‘A proper understanding’ – Beresford suggests – ‘entails looking beneath the surface’ (p. 169). A number of issues weaken the central claim that Africa is experiencing an urban revolution. First, as Deborah Potts highlights in a recent article, urbanization is often conflated with urban growth. Urbanization is relative population change attributed to rural-to-urban migration, which has slowed down across Africa. In contrast urban growth is an absolute measure of population change and has been more rapid, largely due to mortality rates falling more rapidly than fertility rates. Second, many of the chapters base their claims on datasets from UN agencies – and in some cases private consultancy reports – that diverge markedly from national census data. It goes unacknowledged that urbanization reduced in eleven countries between 2001 and 2011. Particularity is disposed in favor of generality. Against this, Sean Fox (chapter 14) argues that urbanization is a continuing historical process, not a natural by-product of employment opportunities and wage differentials. Demographic shifts result from technological and institutional changes that push down mortality rates and cause natural increase within urban areas. Urban growth – not urbanization – is the order of the day. Arguably this clarification does not matter. Rapid urban growth is real and requires effective policy responses to deal with pressing issues from public transportation to affordable housing. Yet clarification would help policymakers differentiate policies that ameliorate the pressures created by urban growth from those that recognise the opportunities arising from it. In Sierra Leone young men frequently use the saying “I am turning” to indicate the intense geographic movement required when finding an income. An artificial separation of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ policy domains precludes attention to the circular mobility entailed in accessing these opportunities – and resulting flow of remittances – in which both the rural and urban poor engage. Parnell and Simon (chapter 13) redress this by suggesting national governments must distinguish between agencies responsible for regulating inter-regional migration and those that manage urban planning issues. Revolutions are ironic, for they turn full circle. The irony of Africa’s urbanism is reflected in the plurality of views presented in this volume: some new, some old. While policy makers clearly need to be more urban focused, the policy approaches suggested remain contradictory. But then urban policy has always been somewhat dysfunctional. Whether or not African states can harness the urban revolution remains to be seen, but this volume offers some considered and timely approaches with which to begin. For practitioners and planning students interested in the big urban questions of the next three decades, this volume will provide a suitable introduction.
- @turin14 4 years ago (last updated 4 years ago)D'ici 2030, les villes africaines auront augmenté de plus de 350 millions de personnes et le continent aura dépassé la barre des 50 % de population urbaine. La révolution urbaine en Afrique vise à fournir un aperçu complet des questions clés - démographiques, culturelles, politiques, techniques, environnementales et économiques - qui entourent l'urbanisation africaine. Ce livre fournira aux auteurs de politiques des informations indispensables ainsi que diverses pistes pour améliorer les villes pour les générations futures. La diversité de l'Afrique ne se limite pas aux jungles, aux savanes et aux déserts qui occupent écologiquement le continent. Elle englobe les complexités d'un continent qui se développe lentement pour devenir le prochain centre économique de l'économie mondiale. Malheureusement, la plupart des gens connaissent l'Afrique en raison de ses conflits actuels, de sa pénurie alimentaire et de son sous-développement. Un autre sujet couvert par les médias, avec un sentiment d'excitation et de promesse, est celui des villes africaines qui dépeignent une idée non occidentale de la conception sociologique. Le Département des affaires économiques et sociales des Nations unies affirme que les villes africaines rassemblent plus de 414 millions de personnes, soit environ 40 % de la population africaine totale. Leurs estimations prévoient que d'ici 2030, 50 % des Africains, soit 744 millions, résideront dans les villes. Ce nombre passera à 1,265 milliard, soit 60 % des Africains, d'ici 2050. Avec cette augmentation spectaculaire de la croissance urbaine, les chercheurs universitaires et les spécialistes des politiques publiques ne se concentrent pas suffisamment sur les villes africaines. Les rédacteurs Susan Parnell et Edgar Pieterse, aux côtés de vingt-et-un autres universitaires, tentent de combler le fossé des connaissances en écrivant sur un large éventail de sujets, parmi lesquels : une planification urbaine appropriée pour le développement économique, la protection de l'environnement et les mesures d'intervention nationales et internationales, l'accès à l'éducation, l'expression religieuse par le biais de la société civile urbaine, et bien d'autres sujets importants. Chacun des chapitres donne un aperçu de son sujet en utilisant à la fois des hypothèses théoriques et des exemples de cas dans toute l'Afrique subsaharienne. Le lecteur aura l'impression que chacun des chapitres peut lui-même servir de base à un livre traitant spécifiquement de ce sujet particulier. Malgré la diversité des sujets abordés dans le livre, tous les auteurs s'accordent sur deux problèmes majeurs. Le premier est que l'urbanisation africaine n'a pas encore été correctement examinée par les spécialistes du développement, les chercheurs en politiques publiques et les personnes qui s'intéressent aux villes africaines. Chaque chapitre commence par décrire la croissance démographique future des villes et comment les informations recueillies sur ce sujet sont insuffisantes par rapport à d'autres qui sont tout aussi importantes. Ce manque d'information a créé le problème du manque de planification urbaine appropriée par les institutions internationales et les gouvernements nationaux. Les Nations unies, le Fonds monétaire international, la Banque mondiale et d'autres institutions mondiales n'ont toujours pas établi de recommandations politiques appropriées pour les gouvernements africains qui aideront au développement des villes. En ce qui concerne la production alimentaire en particulier, Crush et Frayne écrivent que le Programme des Nations unies pour le développement met trop l'accent sur la sécurité alimentaire plutôt que sur la disponibilité des aliments. De nombreux dirigeants politiques africains continuent d'adhérer à un idéalisme centré sur le développement rural plutôt que sur le développement urbain, ce qui entravera le développement global pendant et après 2030. Les villes africaines comptent déjà certains des bidonvilles les plus remarquables, avec une moyenne de 43 % des citadins vivant dans des taudis . Ce nombre ne fera qu'augmenter compte tenu des chiffres de la croissance démographique prévue. Les dirigeants africains doivent prendre les bonnes mesures en matière d'expansion urbaine pour amener la population et l'environnement à une coexistence bénéfique. En outre, il faut une planification urbaine appropriée pour développer les infrastructures nécessaires aux entreprises, par exemple un système de routes pavées, une électricité fiable et de l'eau propre. Les biens sociaux tels que les centres d'éducation et de santé sont également nécessaires pour produire une main-d'œuvre qualifiée. Les principaux inconvénients du livre sont son manque de solutions politiques pour l'urbanisation africaine et son manque de concentration sur les villes en conflit. La plupart des chapitres sont capables d'articuler les problèmes importants et croissants auxquels les villes africaines sont confrontées. Cependant, ils ne fournissent pas de suggestions viables pour des améliorations spécifiques. Au lieu de cela, ils fournissent des solutions théoriques qui sont plutôt vagues. Certaines des suggestions semblent plus en accord avec l'idéologie politique qu'avec les données empiriques ou les besoins des villes individuelles. Un exemple est donné par Duminy, Odendaal et Watson, qui se concentrent davantage sur le fait de rendre l'éducation "progressive" que sur son utilisation pratique pour le développement social, politique et économique de l'Afrique. Cela étant dit, les avant-derniers chapitres s'attachent davantage à apporter des solutions pratiques aux problèmes d'urbanisation de l'Afrique. Toutefois, chacun d'entre eux aurait pu bénéficier de l'application d'une solution spécifique à son étude de cas. La deuxième critique concerne le manque de discussion sur les villes en conflit. Le livre fournit un excellent chapitre de Beall et Goodfellow sur la façon dont les villes passent d'un état de conflit à la paix. Ils se concentrent en particulier sur les villes des Grands Lacs africains comme Kigali, Kinshasa et Goma qui ont connu et, dans une certaine mesure, contiennent encore une certaine violence armée. Cependant, le livre n'aborde pas suffisamment ce sujet important. De nombreuses villes africaines sont actuellement en proie à des guerres, des conflits armés et des actions rebelles. Ces villes auraient dû être mieux abordées pour que les lecteurs comprennent comment les conflits utilisent l'urbanisation au profit de la lutte armée. Ce sujet est important lorsqu'on lit les événements à Bangui, en République centrafricaine, à Mogadiscio, en Somalie et dans les villes du Sud-Soudan. La révolution urbaine en Afrique réussit à ajouter des recherches scientifiques sur le sujet souvent oublié de l'expansion urbaine en Afrique. Au cours des prochaines décennies, les villes africaines connaîtront un taux de croissance très élevé qui exercera de nouvelles pressions sur les infrastructures et les structures urbaines existantes. Des changements de politique publique sont désormais nécessaires pour préparer les villes au XXIe siècle, qui verra les Africains vivre en milieu urbain plutôt que sur des terres agricoles rurales. Cet ouvrage fournira aux auteurs de politiques des informations indispensables ainsi que diverses pistes pour améliorer les villes pour les générations futures. Les départements universitaires de sciences sociales, notamment ceux qui s'intéressent à l'Afrique et au développement, devraient faire de ce livre un manuel standard pour leurs étudiants.
- anonymous 4 years ago (last updated 4 years ago)Africa’s Urban Revolution aims to provide comprehensive insight into the key issues – demographic, cultural, political, technical, environmental and economic – surrounding African urbanization. This book will provide policy writers with much-needed information as well as various avenues through which to improve cities for future generations.Africa’s diversity is not only confined to the jungles, savannas and desert that ecologically occupy the continent. It encompasses the complexities of a continent that is slowly developing to become the next economic centre of the global economy. Unfortunately, most people know Africa based on its current conflicts, food scarcity and underdevelopmentEach of the chapters provides a glimpse into its subject material by utilizing both theoretical assumptions and case examples throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Readers will leave with an impression that each of the chapters can itself be used as the basis for a book specifically examining that particular topic.Even with the diversity of topics throughout the book, all the authors agree on two major problems. The first is that African urbanisation has yet to be properly examined by developmental scholars, public policy researchers, and by people interested in African cities. Every chapter begins by describing the future population growth of cities and how not enough information has been collected on this subject compared to others that are equally as important. This information gap has created the problem of lack of proper urban planning by international institutions and domestic governments. The United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other global institutions still have not properly established policy recommendations for African governments that will assist in the development of cities. In particular with food production, Crush and Frayne write that there is too much focus on food security rather than food availability by the United Nations Development Programme
- @claucr 5 years agoAfrica’s urban revolution in context is the first chapter of a book that was edited in 2014 by Edgar Pieterse and Susan Parnell, Africa’s Urban Revolution. This article is the synthesis of a whole research and dialogues done with the help of the African Centre for Cities (ACC) and lot of activists that thanks to the creation of the ACC could interrogate the urban development issue in order to foster and endogenous reading of “the urban”. Nowadays, Africa is in the midst of a boom in urban expansion and changes and this book is an answer and a research to it. Editors Edgar Pieterse, Director of African Centre for Cities, and Susana Parnell, professor of urban geography in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences at UTC, alongside twenty-one other academic scholars, attempt to bridge the knowledge gap by writing on a wide range of topics. Each chapter of the book has been written by different authors with a same purpose and theme. “This is not a future transition. The African urban revolution is already firmly under way.” This quote is the summary of the chapter in a few words. The demographic transition is a spatial story. After 2030 the continent will develop thousands of new towns and cities. The absolute growth of population and the increasing concentration of Africa’s people in cities will transform the landscape of the urban hinterlands as demand for building material, food, energy and water escalates. Nowadays, the continent is 40 per cent urbanized, which means that there are 414 million African urbanites, more urban habitants than in Europe, Australasia, North or South America. On the other hand, Asia is the only one which has more people living in cities. The Africa’s urban transition, which is manifested itself in various sectors as the education or the transport, doesn’t receive the necessary attention that is required, so it is necessary to expand the information and to raise the leaders to take care of the situation. Africa is now suffering a rupture that is consequence of the massive displacement of the people to the cities and the absolute growth in population. The violence, also, is a factor that affects directly the contemporary African landscape that is in relation with the urban poverty, the depth of chronic poverty is another distinguishing feature of African cities compared with those elsewhere in the world. Africa incorporates over 50 countries, thousands of cities and millions of people. It is a really huge continent with many different climate zones and a complex web of cultures, religions and languages. So it’s important to understand that there’s no one only Africa, it is a set of many things. The scale, the rate and the dynamics of the urbanization in Africa is an important factor to have in consideration for those tasked with managing the building and maintenance of African cities. As Pieterse and Parnell mention, Africa is at least unusual in that its urban transition has, compared with that of other world regions, been delayed. At the point of colonial independence, most Africa was predominantly rural, with less than one in eight people living in a town. Not only that, most urban centres that did exist were either small colonial towns or traditional villages. As the post Second World War population expanded, as a result of the introduction of antibiotics, three factors transformed Africa’s settlement experience. First, the number of new towns and cities increased; second, at the same time the proportion of people living in cities rather than in the countryside grew; and finally there was a significant rise in the number of very large cities, some of which, such as Lagos and greater Kinshasa, are predicted soon to be among the world’s largest metropolitan centres. In my opinion, one of the most relevant fact is that Africa seems to be the reminder of the developed continents like Europe or North America as if it has been waiting until the XXI century to start developing the urbanism. Now, we can see in Africa what happened in the other continents years ago. What is need to take as a consideration is the economic fact, of course, and also what has been said before about Africa’s not an unic continent. Today, Africa’s 50 largest cities all have populations of over a million people. Africa is no longer a continent of villages and towns, it encompasses the full spectrum of scale in urban settlement. Although the antecedents of Africa’s urban revolution can be traced to the second half of the twentieth century, it is only now that the size and importance of urban Africa are becoming widely apparent. Africa’s rate of natural population is the highest in the world and this factor is important to understand the urban transition than migration from rural areas. I think that this point about the relative importance of natural urban growth and migration, which are both driving Africa’s urban expansion, is significant and really important to emphasize because it reveals why, no matter what governments try to do to keep development and people in rural areas, increasing levels of urbanization are probably inevitable and must be confronted. Across this volume, the authors take the position that the anti-urban bias of previous generations is outmoded, and that Africa’s future is, opportunely, urban. However, there is also consensus that the rapidity of the urban transitionhas put great stress on the ability of Africa’s urban leaders to manage change. I think that in the whole article this vision is repeated and also clearly exposed, also the fact that both urban and rural populations are expanding but cities are growing faster. In my opinion Africa’s urbanisation trend line is most like that of Asia, even though the numbers of people are different. In conclusion, the whole chapter is a really nice introduction to the theme of Africa’s urban revolution, treating the global issue in a way that mostly treating the global issue with many examples and sources that make the main concept understandable; the moment of the revolution of urbanism in Africa begins now. Comparing the continent with others and also with its history makes it easier to go into detail and understand that Africa in the future will increase the percentage of people living in urban cities, as has happened with continents such as Europe. Also, having numbers that help you have a more detailed view compared to other continents and even cities and regions accompanied by graphs and tables facilitates the understanding of so much information, sometimes technical, of the situation. Now, with all this information, I have such a lot of visions and informations to understand even more the Africa’s urban revolution in relation to all the other parts of the world in the actual context.
- @mueandre 9 years agoAfrica’s Urban Revolution was first published in 2014 by Zed Books Ltd, in New York, USA (ISBN 978 1 78032 522 4). The book is edited by Susan Parnell, an urban geographer in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences at the University of Cape Town and Edgar Pieterse, holder of the South African Research Chair in Urban Policy. The book contains 14 chapters written by different authors focusing on key aspects of the urban revolution, which is currently taking place, namely: conflict and post-war transition, environment, economies, religion and social life, food security, transportation, decentralization, law reforms, education, infrastructure and many more topics related to the urban development of African. Actually the African continent is 40% urbanized (414 Mio urbanities by 2011) and predictions (UN DESA) indicate an urbanization of 50% by the early 2030s. Africa has already more city dwellers than Europe, Australasia, North or South America. Only Asia has more people living in cities. The authors are the opinion that Africa’s Urban transition, which manifests across sectors as diverse as transport, education and religion is not afforded the serious attention that it needs or deserves. Therefore they want to provoke a realization of the need to build a larger policy and intellectual project to understand, contest and shape Africa’s urban future. The objective is to get a sense of the nature of the shift in the size of the population and the associated changes in settlement patterns to assess what urban growth and higher levels of urbanization means for policy and politics in Africa. The authors take the position that Africa’s future is urban. According to the authors the Africa’s rate of natural population growth, which is the highest in the world is the driving factor behind urbanization in Africa. According to them only 1/3 of Africa’s urban growth is caused by rural to urban migration and 2/3 are due to natural urban population growth in the cities. This means no matter what governments and development agencies try to do to keep development and people in rural areas, increasing levels of urbanization are inevitable and must be confronted. From this perspective governments and development agencies should focus more on the urban development rather than on developing the rural areas. This becomes even more obvious by looking at the urbanization levels in Africa. In 1950 the urbanization level was 35%, by 2030 it will reach to 48% and probably by 2050 the level will be over 60%. In the opinion of the author the global environmental changes will increase the migration, leading to further urban population growth and according to the author the migration caused by the global environmental changes will be in future the main driving factor for urbanization. However the effect of global environmental changes on a specific location remains quite unpredictable and it is still unclear what this would mean in terms of migration. In addition to that are the migration processes quite complex and not only in one direction, therefore the statement is a bit risky in my eyes. The author starts the topic of the relationship between urbanization and development with a statement from UN-Habitat (2010) indicating that: “The prosperity of nations is intimately linked to the prosperity of their cities. No country has ever achieved sustained economic growth or rapid social development without urbanizing” and from the World Bank (2009: 24) arguing that: “No country has grown to middle income without industrializing and urbanizing. None has grown to high income without vibrant cities. The rush to cities in developing countries seems chaotic, but it is necessary”. From these statements it seems as if the connection between urbanization and economic development is automatic and inevitable. The author mentions different research studies with different findings and contradicting evidence regarding the link between urbanization and economic growth in Africa. It becomes obvious that there is no automatic or straightforward relation but that the economic development is influenced by different factors and processes. It would therefore be very interesting to carry out further studies on the factors and processes influencing economic growth in Africa and on the measures to be taken to bust economic growth through the urbanization process. The book presents and discusses different aspects of the African urban revolution, with a focus on the whole African continent. Therefore no information or examples are provided on a country, sectorial or even city level. Readers should be aware that the presented findings might well fit on a continental level, however on a country or city level there might be significant differences, due to the different contexts among the African countries. The book follows an interdisciplinary approach, as the chapters are written by different authors. This gives a multilayer analysis on the different aspects of Africa’s urban revolution and shows also different opinions among the authors.
