Governing cities in Africa

Governing Cities in Africa: Politics and Policies brings a unique set of comparative and collaboratively generated insights to bear on some key themes of urbanism in sub-Saharan Africa. The book brings to the fore themes that are often neglected in urban studies generally - such as the role of political parties - and interrogates and proposes alternatives to some terms - such as informality - which are perhaps overused in exploring cities in Africa. It has a very dynamic approach to building genuinely new analyses, working across a few to several cities at once, exploring both astonishing similarities and surprising sifferences, and bringing the clarity of thinking of some of the top scholars working on these issues in the region and beyond. This is a rare kind of book, based on deep empirical knowledge and complex theoretical reflection, drawing insight from different language communities and from a very wide array of different cities - it is genuinely comparative, and a model for how to build conceptual insights about urban processes.