13. African cities: decolonial approaches to contemporary urbanization processes and phenomena

Our future is urban. When the Sustainable Development Goals were launched, it was predicted that by 2050 two thirds of the world’s population would live in cities. Urbanization is a process of demographic, spatial, economic, environmental and socio-cultural transformation of societies, through population increase and movement; the transition from agrarian livelihoods to monetary economies based on trade, services or industry; the increase in distance between the places where resources are extracted, consumed and the resulting waste managed; the expansion of settlements and the agglomeration of people and infrastructures; the transition from ethnic-family relationships and identities to heterogeneous and cosmopolitan socialities (Satterthwaite & Tacoli, 2003; Jenkins, 2013; United Nations, 2018). These processes have taken place gradually throughout human history, since the beginning of agricultural production and sedentarization, and consolidated during the Industrial Revolution. The middle of the last century saw the dramatic acceleration of the urbanization of societies in the so-called “Global South”, from ancestral and colonial cities, which became the capitals of newly independent states and grew exponentially, to urban centers that welcomed the rural exodus produced by national liberation struggles, socio-economic structural adjustment programmes and the global opening up to the market economy. This is why we are considered to be living in the “urban revolution” (Lefebvre, 1970). On the African continent, urbanization processes have taken place in specific historical-geographical contexts and, although similar to cities around the world, African urban centers display peculiar characteristics resulting from colonial legacies, neoliberal extractivist practices and limited industrialization (Fay & Opal, 2000; Anderson et al, 2013). The rapid increase in urban populations, informality and circular migration, interdependence with adjacent rural territories, social relations steeped in rurality and hybrid forms of governance between customary and institutional authorities characterize these urbanization processes (Pieterse & Parnell, 2014; Pieterse, 2017). However, the study of the formation and development of cities formally emerged from the urbanization phenomena observed in Europe and North America from the 19th century onwards. This was the result of industrialization and economic growth, the rural exodus and the emergence of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as new social classes. Euro-American urbanization was taken as the paradigm of urban “development” and “modernity”, and rationality, efficiency, and more recently, “green” and “intelligent” development became conditions for urban “success”, compared to the “rest of the world” (Robinson, 2006). This Eurocentrism, based on difference, separation and hierarchization, materialized in normative assumptions about “other cities” as problematic places of chaos and failure, rejecting their intrinsic characteristics, alternative developments and original modernities (Simone, 2004). Positivist urban sociology sought to formulate generalizable theories and predict future developments for urban societies, using mathematical models and statistical analysis to test hypotheses (Koch & Latham, 2017, eds.). This quantitative approach to cities as networks of infrastructure, bureaucracy and technology neglects their qualitative, sensory and lived dimensions; it ignores the structural forces that shape cities – capital, class and politics – in their territorial and historical contexts, and their products of fragmentation and spatial hierarchization and social injustice, especially for poor inhabitants and ethnic minorities (Mbembe & Nuttal, 2004; Koch & Latham, 2017, eds.). But seeing cities as the result of economic and institutional interactions also ignores other types of division besides class – such as race, religion and gender – and devalues the initiatives of the urbanites who co-create the city, seen as victims of structural forces; formal governance is only one side of urban life, as informal networks of interaction play a fundamental role in providing services, solving problems and creating opportunities (Simone, 2004). Furthermore, formerly colonized societies cannot be fully understood without addressing the impacts of colonialism, especially in terms of the production and dissemination of knowledge. Thus, contemporary urban academics claim the “other cities” as equally valid for forging urban theory, since common characteristics of urbanization and globalization can be observed in each city, at various levels and scales (Robinson, 2006). Interdisciplinary urbanists propose horizontal comparisons rather than vertical hierarchies to grasp the drivers of urban (trans)formation – how cities are made and lived by their inhabitants in their material lives, subjective meanings and collective interactions; with their daily challenges and the strategies they define to overcome them (Myers, 2001; Parnell & Pieterse, 2016; Patel, 2016). This critique questions exogenous models, theories and research methods that are poorly suited to the contexts of fragile governance, data irregularity, great human needs and unstable security of many global cities. Collaborative, interdisciplinary, comparative and mixed methods of co-producing knowledge can cover the complex quantitative and qualitative dimensions of the urban and create bridges between academics, policy-makers, professionals and urbanites to stimulate positive urban development. Non-academic voices from film, art, photography, journalism and literature must be accepted as valid for analyzing, theorizing and communicating the city. Contemporary academic-activists advocate for the “decolonization” of scientific research, moving from academic “extractivism” to collaboration, aware of the power dynamics between researchers and participants and the conventional scientific products that reinforce them (Parnell & Oldfield, 2014, Eds.; Gubrium & Harper, 2016 ; Marrengane & Croese, 2020, Eds.). An example of this critique is the construct of Southern Urbanism, formulated by academics from the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town (Pieterse, 2015; Schindler, 2017), based on the rapid urbanization of the African and Asian continents: theories rooted in diverse realities (grounded theory) and interdisciplinary methodological experimentation with participatory tools and endogenous propositions are crucial to producing useful knowledge for urban development and sustainability. Other decolonial constructs such as Indigenous Knowledge (Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013) and Relational Research (Gerlach, 2018) link the production of knowledge to specific historical-cultural contexts, rejecting the “objective neutrality” of Eurocentric positivism and arguing that knowledge is also experiential and collective. These constructs question the dominant urban theory and are useful for critically analyzing cities. Within this theoretical framework, this panel aims to invite discussion of decolonial approaches to urban studies on the African continent, which analyse spatial, social, economic, environmental or political phenomena and processes of contemporary urbanization, through various theoretical concepts and methodological practices.