Everyday Urban Practices in Africa (Routledge Studies in African Development)

This book disrupts the dominant underlying international norms informing urban development strategies across African cities. International policy frameworks have created a new universal agenda for developing cities. However, these frameworks have also imposed global paradigms and discourses that are often in conflict with local urbanisms. As we approach the deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, there is need for reflection and deliberation on a post-2030 agenda.

The authors identify powerful assumptions, norms, and positionalities that obfuscate the efforts to achieve sustainable development in African cities, as well as along the North–South divide. They argue that a disruptive critique of these normative concepts, grounded in the lived African urban everyday, opens up opportunities to dismantle their assumed neutrality. Through disruption, the authors critically re-interpret the meanings of policy and the praxis of local urbanism, ultimately challenging the logic of universalising concepts underpinning implementation in the current international policy system, and asserting the need for contextualised urban policies.

The book will be of interest to scholars and students of urban studies, development planning, urban governance, human settlements, development studies, urban geography, and African studies. It will also be useful for practitioners including town and regional/urban planners, urban policy consultants, and international development cooperation agencies.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Nadine Appelhans is Senior Researcher at the Habitat Unit, TU Berlin, Guest Researcher at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, and Scientific Coordinator of the Wits-TUB-UNILAG Urban Lab.

Carmel Rawhani is the Impact Evaluation, Research, and Learning Manager at Fairtrade International, working from Bonn, Germany, and contributing to the Wits-TUB-UNILAG Urban Lab as Research Fellow.

Marie Huchzermeyer is Professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and is Director of the Centre for Urbanism and Built Environment Studies in that school.

Basirat Oyalowo is a senior lecturer in Real Estate at the Oxford Brookes University. Previously, she was Senior Lecturer and WITS-TUB-UNILAG Urban Lab Post doctoral fellow at the University of Lagos, Nigeria.

Mfaniseni Fana Sihlongonyane is Professor of Development Planning and Urban Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, School of Architecture and Planning.