The city in sub-Saharan Africa

In: Short, J.R. (ed) 2017. A research agenda for Cities. Edward Elgar Publishers. 17 The city in sub-Saharan Africa Edgar Pieterse Urbanization is unique in Africa because of the compressed time-frame of its unfolding and the predominance of non-formal patterns. The regions that we broadly define as the global North went from predominantly rural to predominantly urban between 1750 and 1950 in lockstep with modernization and industrialization (Satterthwaite 2007). An equivalent demographic and territorial transition will unfold in sub-Saharan Africa between 1950 and 2035 (UN-DESA 2015), but without the economic benefits of imperial extraction enjoyed by the North during its transition. Moreover, the degree of social-cultural dislocation in African societies are much more extreme due to the rolling dynamics of anti-colonial struggles, post-colonial volatility, pilfering and conflict, and, more recently, neoliberal marginalization. The terms of trade and exchange continue to imprison African economies. In this short chapter I briefly delineate the specificities of African urbanization with an eye on how various traditions of academic research have responded. My central assertion is that we desperately need to advance interdisciplinary research rooted in real-life experiments to find situated responses to the extremities of contemporary urban life. However, the epistemic challenge is to undertake this work with a deep respect for the cultural complexities of everyday life that might hold the political and theoretical clues to make sense of the elusive African city. Non-formal urbanization The chapter deliberately elides the concept of informality because it is misleading in contexts where the bulk of urban life and economy does not conform to the takenfor-granted categories of formality. Unfortunately we still do not have a powerful enough concept to both capture and interpret the confluence and interlinkages of the following features of African urbanization elaborated briefly in this section. As a place-holder, “non-formal” seems to do a better job of disrupting self-evident reference points. The unconventional and regionally specific dynamics of African urbanization (See Table 17.1) are best glimpsed through the following five macro characteristics. 218 M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 218 13/01/2017 08:27 THE CITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 219 Table 17.1 African countries categorized by urbanization, fertility transition and economic transformation Category Features Diversifiers The urbanization levels of diversifiers range between 40% and 65%. They are also close to completing their fertility transition with total fertility ratios of three or fewer children per woman. These countries are Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia. This group has Africa’s highest level of income (above USD 10 000 gross national income [GNI] per capita in 2013 with the exception of Morocco) and of human development (with a Human Development Index [HDI] value above 0.60). Early urbanizers Nine countries fall into this category distinguished by progress in their urbanization and fertility transition without having been able to diversify their economic base. Mostly found in West Africa, they include Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Senegal. These countries are about 35–50% urbanized and have total fertility ratios of about five children per woman. They are typically lowto lower-middle income countries (USD 1000–4000 GNI per capita in 2013), with low-to-medium levels of human development (HDI values between 0.40 and 0.57). Late urbanizers The 11 countries that fall into this category are predominantly rural yet have begun their urbanization and fertility transition and structural transformation more recently. In contrast to the early urbanizers, they are located in East Africa and include Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. Less than a third of their population typically lives in urban areas. Their total fertility rates are four to six children per woman. Income levels are low (USD 1000– 2200 GNI per capita in 2013), and levels of human development are low-tomedium (HDI values between 0.38 and 0.54). Interestingly, two relatively authoritarian countries, Ethiopia and Rwanda, have demonstrated an impressive capacity to diversify their economic base over the past decade, albeit from a low basis. Agrarians This cohort contains predominantly rural countries that are still at a very early stage of their urbanization and fertility transition. Many of the 11 agrarian countries are landlocked, such as Niger, Chad and Malawi. Typically less than a third of the population resides in urban areas, and women have on average at least six children. These countries’ income levels did not exceed USD 1600 GNI per capita in 2013, and they have low levels of human development (HDI values between 0.48 and 0.34). Their economies are predominantly agriculture-based: agriculture makes up 25–41% of their GDP and manufacturing 4–12%. Natural resource- This group has urbanized with windfalls from natural resources, which have based countries attracted labour out of agriculture. Compared with other countries at similar income levels, these 13 countries show a higher degree of urbanization (40–78%), generally higher fertility rates and a high degree of urban primacy, with the capital usually disproportionally bigger than other cities. The share of GDP in agriculture is low at 3–21%. These countries exhibit huge M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 219 13/01/2017 08:27 220 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR CITIES Table 17.1 (continued) Category Features Natural resource- variations in income levels (USD 500–20 000 per capita), in the types of based countries natural resources they produce (e.g. hydrocarbons, minerals and metals) and in their geography (e.g. Libya is predominantly arid while Nigeria is mostly rain-fed). Due to the over-reliance on natural resources they are extremely vulnerable to international market swings, which impact on the investment capacity of the state. Source: AfDB/OECD/UNDP (2016). Firstly, 62 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa’s housing is slums, the highest figure for any world region (UN-Habitat 2012). It is safe to assume that as urban areas continue to grow at a considerable pace, and concomitant investments in urban services lag behind, the absolute number of people living precariously is likely to increase over the next few decades making an already brutal situation even worse. The speed of urban growth is well beyond the capacity of most African (local) governments. (AfDB/OECD/UNDP, 2016). However, amid large-scale deficits in formal service delivery, a rich and multivalent system of compensation pulses to support everyday lives and livelihoods (Jaglyn 2014; Myers 2011; Rakodi 2014). Thus, city building is predominantly an organic and non-state affair, embodying vast systems of social organization, exchange, oversight, regulation, violence, reciprocity and continuous recalibration (Myers 2011; Simone 2004, 2010). Secondly, slum living conditions go hand-in-hand with predominantly informal economic systems (Skinner 2010). Most African economies are lopsided. Owing to colonial determinations, compounded by an asymmetrical global trading regime, most African economies have remained stuck in a commodity-driven export model, rendering them particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of global markets and continuously devoid of investment capital to transition to more diversified economic activities (Jerven 2015; Moghalu 2014). Thus, as the labour force expands, the formal economy is simply not able to grow fast enough to generate sufficient employment opportunities to absorb a rapidly growing youthful population bristling with globalized consumerist aspirations. Thirdly, due to small tax bases that stem from slight economies, most African cities have by and large failed to invest in critical urban infrastructures for most of the post-colonial era: a failure reinforced by inadequate maintenance of constructed infrastructure (Gutman et al. 2015; Pieterse and Hyman 2014). This creates a crisis of provision and affordability. Two-thirds of urban Africans fall below the $4 per day poverty line. The only (financially) viable infrastructure markets are among the middle classes and business sectors, instantiating an investment regime that worsens spatial and social inequalities. More specifically, almost all new infrastructure M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 220 13/01/2017 08:27 THE CITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 221 investments in African cities go into residential and commercial stock for the (fairly small) middle class, premised on a car-based mobility system. Unsurprisingly there are now a number of speculative bubbles around the concept of new (smart) cities and towns tethered to prodigious highway construction, exacerbating terrible traffic congestion and mobility inefficiencies (Provoost 2010). Considering the perpetuation of urban sprawl, combined with rapid urbanization in vast peri-urban zones, such inefficiencies seem likely to worsen, especially when regulatory systems are by and large ineffective and also rooted in paralegal systems of rule (Berrisford 2014; UN-Habitat 2014). Fourthly, the combination of urban neglect and inappropriate elite investments accelerates the distorted spatial form of most African cities that derive their fundamental structure from colonial planning and regulation. This produces urban landscapes of inefficient sprawl, stark urban divisions and very poor quality public space (UN-Habitat 2012). This urban form has a particularly debilitating impact on the budgets of poor urban majorities who have to expend up to 40 per cent of their incomes on transport, stifling prospects of social and economic mobility. Paradoxically, in a context of sprawl, slum settlements experience very high densities due to over-crowding and small dwelling units generating all manner of social and safety problems. Finally, beyond these socio-economic and related infrastructural factors, most African cities are also saddled with ineffective and often unresponsive governments. Sometimes this is due to the lack of devolution of financial resources and legal competencies to lower levels of government (Pieterse and Smit 2014); other times, it is due to deeply entrenched rent-seeking behaviour and patronage (Moss 2007). Importantly, African democracies are being built and tested in cities. Opposition political parties find a footing and springboard in the neglected slums of cities, creating a perverse political incentive for the establishment to further ignore and bypass slum areas (Resnick 2012). In other words, nascent multiparty democracy has as yet no necessary or obvious positive spin-offs for popular neighbourhoods in many African cities. This is just one among many issues lacking systematic research and debate. The instinctive and understandable response to these observations is a combination of moral outrage and/or political depression. However, it is critical to resist such sentiments. Despite these glaring fault lines of injustice and exclusion, the truth is that we actually know very little about the fine grain of everyday life in the African city. Urban dwellers are nothing if not resilient. Somehow, across diverse urban settings, people are able to find room to hustle, invest, hedge, negotiate, contract, support, extract, deal, consolidate, expand and continuously recalibrate their positions in relation to scarce resources and opportunities. This implies a capacity to read and expertly navigate complex and ever-shifting environments; capacities which have yet to be studied and mined for understanding, insight and innovation. M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 221 13/01/2017 08:27 222 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR CITIES Africa’s urban diversity However, before we delve into the ways in which the literature addresses African urbanization, another set of statistical markers is of interest because it reinforces the enormous diversity in evidence across 54 African countries. A report by the African Development Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) provides a novel typology to categorize African countries in terms of urbanization dynamics, fertility transitions and economic development as expressed in the changing role of agriculture in the economy and by the importance of natural resource extraction in the economy (Table 17.1). This typology illustrates the diversity of conditions and trends across Africa. The generally high fertility rates across most of Africa contribute to robust projected population growth rates in both rural and urban areas. Figure 17.1, from the same report, compares a disaggregated Africa (sub-Sahara Africa minus South Africa and North Africa) with Latin America to reveal the dramatic patterns. Urbanization in Africa is most rapid and prevalent in what the OECD calls the urban–rural interface zones, where one can observe a continuum of rural areas, villages, towns and cities of fewer than 500 000 inhabitants. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the agrarian and late urbanizer countries. Drawing on United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) data, the OECD calculates that 83 per cent of Africa’s population lives in such a urban–rural interface. Across the different regions, the share of the population living in settlements smaller than 500 000 inhabitants is as follows: 91% in East Africa, 80% in West Africa, 77% in North Africa, 73% in Central Africa and 65% in Southern Africa. Looking at all of Africa’s urban areas, 63% have a population of fewer than 500 000 people. Africa’s urbanisation has thus to a large extent taken the form of “urban villages”, diffusing urban growth in smaller towns. (AfDB/OECD/UNDP, 2016: 159) This does not mean that large cities are not important. In 2010, the rate of growth of cities of fewer than 500 000 inhabitants was still second to that of the largest cities. These macro trends underscore that it is somewhat foolhardy to speak of a singular African urbanization. Instead we need to recognize that the material conditions associated with complex patterns of urbanization are marked by massive deficits which drive the predominantly non-formal basis of everyday life and systems of rule, regulation and social interactions. Since these dynamics do not conform to conventional measures of economic development, state building or modern social cohesion, an extraordinary amount of attention to detail is required to make sense of the adaptive dynamics of African cities. M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 222 13/01/2017 08:27 M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 223 Total Rural Population at Mid-Year, 1950–2050 1 200 000 1 000 000 1 000 000 800 000 Thousands Thousands Total Urban Population at Mid-Year, 1950–2050 1 200 000 600 000 800 000 600 000 400 000 400 000 200 000 200 000 0 1950 2000 2050 2000 Sub-Saharan Africa excl. South Africa Sub-Saharan Africa excl. South Africa Latin America and the Caribbean Latin America and the Caribbean South Africa South Africa Northern Africa Northern Africa Source: Adapted from UN-DESA (2015). Figure 17.1 0 1950 Demographic trends for select regions and South Africa, 1950–2050 2050 13/01/2017 08:27 224 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR CITIES Perspectives on the African city In a series of articles I have argued that the literature on the African city can broadly be categorized into three types (Pieterse 2010, 2011, 2015). Firstly, radical political economists who write from a Marxist or neo-Marxist perspective and draw attention to the big structural factors that drive Africa’s economic marginalization in the global system and how these processes are mediated by “captured” political elites who have a vested interest in its reproduction. These authors tend to focus on the neoliberal forms of governmentality that have become pervasive in many African countries, welded onto dysfunctional post-colonial dispensations marked by political corruption, internecine violence and elite predation. Significantly, over the last two decades or so this kind of reading has often been combined with a Foucauldian analysis of state power and systems of governmentality to unveil how progressivesounding development discourses are in fact clever ways of absolving the state of fundamental duties while making citizens responsible for their own wellbeing (Miraftab 2004). Secondly, a lot of research stems from what one can call a “policy-fix” genre. This refers to scholarship focused on the vast range of development deficits to provide answers about how these problems can be tackled or solved. Given that the international development industry functions on the basis of perpetually “solving” development dilemmas, a significant amount of resources gets mobilized for this kind of work. Since most African universities have been starved of research funding for most of the post-colonial era, and especially over the last two decades, it is unsurprising that this genre of scholarship has become common in many African universities; a process that Mahmoud Mamdani (2011) elucidates in powerful terms. Typically, this developmentalist literature tends to be thematic or sectoral and changes as the development buzz words morph inside the global development industry. However, a lot of it returns to questions of institutional efficacy of the state to understand and manage complex urbanization processes and manifestations. Unsurprisingly, this literature is roundly critiqued for being apolitical, ameliorative and possibly complicit with larger power structures (Huchzermeyer 2011). Thirdly, in response to the generalizations of political economists, and the simplifications of the policy-fix perspectives, another literature has grown in importance, especially in the last decade. This is a diverse group of critical social theorists who insist on achieving a much more fine-grained, ethnographic understanding of the lived patterns of urban life in order to get a purchase on the specificities of subjectivities, lifeworlds and forms of social interaction and power. It stands in stark contrast to the structuralist and functionalist accounts provided in the first two literatures. Two leading authors in this genre argue: There have been limits to the capacity of the epistemological imagination to pose questions about how we know what we know and what that knowledge is grounded upon; to draw on multiple models of time so as to avoid one-way causal models; to open a space for broader comparative undertakings; and to account for the multiplicity of the pathways M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 224 13/01/2017 08:27 THE CITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 225 and trajectories of change. Where empirical work and local studies are carried out, generally they are poorly informed theoretically. As fresh questions emerge and new dramas take shape, the social sciences manifest a surprising lack of openness toward the humanities. Historical and political scholarship is not combined with fundamental philosophical inquiry, and this has led to a dramatic “thinning” of “the social.” The latter is still understood as a matter of order and contract rather than as the locus of experiment and artifice. (Mbembe and Nuttall 2004: 349) According to Mbembe and Nuttall, taking on the challenge of writing the social back into our understanding of African “life forms” requires an examination of everyday practices and imaginaries as it unfolds at the nexus of multiple crossings that constitute urban spatiality. For, like most cities in the world, “the continent has been and still is a space of flows, of flux, of translocation, with multiple nexuses of entry and exit points. As evinced by numerous recent studies, the continent we have in mind exists only as a function of circulation and of circuits” (Mbembe and Nuttall 2004: 351). This implies a spatiality that is predominantly shaped by the imperative, desire and tyranny of incessant mobility. This brief summary of their approach points to the post-structural and post-colonial epistemologies that inform the critique and the kinds of attentions that it calls for. However, in practice, these literatures on the African city tend to run on separate tracks, and use caricatures of the each other to inform their conceptual certitude or disinterest. In my own work and the broader epistemic project we are nurturing at the African Centre for Cities, we adopt a more non-sectarian and experimental approach (Parnell and Pieterse 2016). It is informed by important critical and exploratory theoretical efforts to reconsider and redeploy urbanism. For the sake of argument, I have organized these strands into four categories, which in turn help us understand the importance of both qualitative and quantitative research, as well as articulate applied problem-solving questions with more ephemeral concerns that stem from art, philosophy and literary studies. This is an experimental reading and sensibility that is meant to stimulate innovation in the fields of urban research and practice. Broadening urban epistemologies1 Urban studies is going through theoretical tumult because of the recognition that much of the canon is in fact based on very specific historical processes and geographic specificities (Edensor and Jayne 2011; Robinson 2006; Roy 2008; Tonkiss 2011). Yet, this work has tended to function and circulate with universal applicability. Recent evidence of this is the explosion of work on neoliberal governmentality across the global South even though the most elementary governmental and regulatory institutions analysed by the neoliberal critique were never fully in existence in these societies (Ferguson 2010, 2011). In light of the spirit of greater theoretical diversity, heterodoxy and openness, I provide a survey of key perspectives from critical urbanism to inform our approach to the African city (Pieterse 2012). See Figure 17.2. M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 225 13/01/2017 08:27 226 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR CITIES VITALIST ONTOLOGY EVERYDAY URBANISM ECOLOGICAL URBANISM SOUTHERN URBANISM INTERVENTION: GROUNDED PRAGMATIC FUTURTIY: PHILOSOPHY, ART, LITERATURE DEPTH: INTIMATE ETHNOGRAPHY SURFACE: QUANTITATIVE TRENDS, TYPOLOGIES AND TOPOGRAPHIES Source: Pieterse (2012: 40). Figure 17.2 Epistemological fields in urban studies The survey covers four theoretical fields: southern urbanism, everyday urbanism, vitalist ontology and ecological urbanism. The southern urbanism perspective seeks to provide a corrective to mainstream urban theory by foregrounding the demographic weight of the global South alongside a post-colonial re-reading of history, state craft, political identities, hybrid cultural systems and the multiplicity of bases of power, subjugation and empowerment. There is an insistence on the incompleteness of power and the capacity of the subaltern to subvert, circumvent and remake formal political intentions. Given the ways in which African cities are too often rendered as simply a product of colonial power and exploitation, or its aftermath, this theoretical field points to an enormous potential to begin to rewrite the history, present and potential futures of African cities on their own cultural, historical and spatial terms. Southern urbanism also reminds scholars to pay attention to the spatial and temporal specificity of urbanization processes unfolding in the early 21st century amid globalization, a changing international division of labour and unprecedented environmental risks. M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 226 13/01/2017 08:27 THE CITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 227 Although epistemologically, everyday urbanism as a field of urban theorization shares a great affinity with southern urbanism, in contrast, it is consumed with the molecular dynamics of urbanity. Everyday urbanism seeks to take subjectivity and multiple social assemblages seriously on their own terms without overlaying a normative filter. It is therefore not surprising that a lot of the research in this vein has tended to focus on what some call the informal city (Tonkiss 2011; Varley 2013). Indeed, given the level of slum prevalence and informal economic activity that mark most African cities, this is indeed a central concern in a lot of current research. However, the field extends well beyond informality. Simone (2004, 2010) is a seminal theorist in this epistemic field since his work has for the past three decades painstakingly documented and theorized the centrality of everyday life to a larger appropriation of the urban and cityness. In his oeuvre he has always been less interested in the preoccupation with informality but rather insisted that a more agnostic sensibility was required. So, for Simone, the point is to pursue the dogged work of trying to understand the implications of what people do, particularly as it is clear that residents, even in the desperate ways they may talk about their lives, usually think about them as more than survival alone. Yes, survival is the overwhelming preoccupation of many. But the pursuit of survival involves actions, relations, sentiments, and opportunities that are more than survival alone. It is these thousands of small excesses which also act on the city, remaking it ever so slightly into something different than it was before. These changes are not measured by any easily discernable standard that would allow one to say that the city is becoming more just, equal, cutthroat, revolutionary, messianic, or hellish. And thus the important work is perhaps simply to document these efforts on the part of the poor to give rise to a new moral universe, a sense of value, of potential, and of the unexpected to which people’s attention, no matter how poor, is also paid. (Simone 2010: 38–39) Here one can sense Simone’s methodological obsession with the infinitesimal pluralism of ordinary life and aspiration, excavated on their own terms, but also with a reluctant normative intent; a recognition that values, (spiritual) practices and mores suture everyday life; but these are also profoundly unstable and malleable and therefore to be understood and projected with great care and provisionality. By definition this approach to urban research demands a commitment to ethnography and painstaking observation and interpretation to make sense of the “thousands of small excesses”. This approach also tends to be critical of structural political economy or developmentalist readings of the city (Mbembe and Nuttall 2004). Approaches to rethink urbanism in the global North have tended to come from scholars who espouse a vitalist ontology and non-representational theory (Amin and Thrift 2002). Vitalism can be understood as a “tradition in philosophy that believes in the existence of a life force in material assemblages that cannot be explained through mechanistic approaches. As an ontology, it argues for the immanent emergence of form, rather than the existence of transcendent archetypes” (Lorimer 2009: 334). Amin reminds us that this approach induces an expansive understanding of cities and cityness: M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 227 13/01/2017 08:27 228 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR CITIES cities might be thought of as machinic entities; engines of order, repetition, and innovation (sparked by the clash of elements and bodies) that drive the urban experience, including what humans make of themselves, others, and their environment. The urban environment is a meshwork of steel, concrete, natural life, wires, wheels, digital codes, and humans placed in close proximity and it is the rhythms of the juxtapositions and associations – coming together in symbolic projections, cultural routines, institutional practices, regulatory norms, physical flows, technological regimes, experience of the landscape, software systems – that surge through the human experience. The machinic rhythms of the city, I would argue, blend together the human and the urban condition, making people subjects of a specific kind, with their demeanor and outlook (compared to that of humans in other time-spaces) formed by their inhabitation of the urban environment and, most importantly, its inhabitation in them, fixed through these rhythms. (Amin 2011: 634) This relational ontology is coupled to an affective understanding of subjectivity. Again, Lorimer (2009: 334) clarifies that affect “refers to both material, ecological properties of a body and the forces and processes that link them together. It describes prediscursive, embodied experiences that are subsequently codified into subjective emotions.” It is clear that this ontology can easily be combined with the theoretical interests of the everyday urbanism. Scholars who adopt vitalist ontology are critical of textually oriented post-structural deconstruction on the one hand, and neo-Marxist structuralist accounts of inert and singular materialities, on the other. Instead, they are attentive in a much deeper and fuller account of how agency is enacted through particular configurations and emergences of both human and non-human actants, in ways that tune into the affective dispositions of people and the atmospheres of places that they inhabit or transit (de Boeck 2015; Larkin 2013). The net effect is an account of cities that emphasizes the fragility of all that seem solid, stable, gargantuan, immutable and taken for granted. Work in this register is just emerging in the African context and seems to be most readily embraced by urban political ecologists (Kaika and Swyngedouw 2011; Lawhon et al. 2014). In keeping with contemporary concerns about environmental limits, ecological urbanism seeks to foreground the longer-term viability of contemporary models of urban development, design and material reproduction. It is consistent with a vitalist ontology and recognizes the variable assemblages of actants (Latour 2005) that support the unremitting social-natural reproduction of the city. By rendering the natural–social–technical interfaces of material infrastructures strange and legible, ecological urbanists also seek out propositional thought: that is, consideration of multiple pathways towards alternative, more resilient and more liveable forms and modalities of habitation (NSFWUS 2000; Swilling and Annecke 2012). Central to this concern is an interest in the natural-social assemblages of the city as mediated by infrastructure networks and the built environment. As Stephen Graham (2010: 1) explains: energy, water, sewerage, transport, trade, finance, and communication infrastructures allow modern urban life to exist. Their pipes, ducts, servers, wires, conduits, electronic M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 228 13/01/2017 08:27 THE CITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 229 transmissions, and tunnels sustain the flows, connections, and metabolisms that are intrinsic to contemporary cities. Through their endless technological agency, these systems help transform the natural into the cultural, the social, and the urban. Similar observations can be extended to the role of the built environment as mediators and embodiments of urban functionalities, form, symbolic projection and desires of control (de Boeck 2011; Larkin 2013). The unique contribution of this perspective is that it offers a powerful and grounded excavation of how urban injustice and inequality is literally wired into the infrastructures and landscapes of the city, but can deploy its analytical purchase to also consider alternative “path dependencies”. Thus, Mohsen Mostafavi (2011: 17) argues that new imaginaries of alternative urbanisms can be conjured from a perspective that views “the fragility of the planet and its resources as an opportunity for speculative design innovations rather than as a form of technical legitimation for promoting conventional solutions”. Embracing experimentalism Figure 17.2 provides a diagrammatic illustration of these four currents in urban theory that can shape a multi-dimensional, open-ended and propositional research agenda on African cities. By putting these approaches in a relational field, it becomes possible to illustrate the methodological and political implications of this heterodox reading. The horizontal axis reflects a vital political sensibility. The urgency of routinized deprivation and exploitation demands a sustained engagement with a politics of intervention to respond to both the manifestations and the deeper structural drivers of uneven development and urban exclusion. This signals where this epistemological approach can draw on the insights of research that is often stuck in a policy fix mode and combine it with the valuable insights of structuralist scholars who are insightful about the deeper systems of economic and political power that reproduce the status quo. However, the ontological vantage points of both vitalism and ecological urbanism demands going much further than the structuralist readings of critical theorists while remaining open to a political sensibility that can embrace indeterminacy, futurity and uncertainty through more philosophical, artistic and literary accounts of the world and its multiple becomings (Connolly 2013). Of course, it would be an error to suggest that all these perspective are easily compatible, but it does allow one to engage urban research in highly complex and multivalent settings like the African city with greater provisionality and openness without abandoning an ethical insistence of social and environmental justice. Finally, Figure 17.2 also hints at the importance of establishing productive complementarities between qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. The different epistemic approaches tend to lean more in one direction than the other. This is the most stylized dimension of the illustration, but it helps to demonstrate why we need to continuously cross-reference and interpolate both kinds of data and M4173-SHORT_TEXT.indd 229 13/01/2017 08:27 230 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR CITIES exploration. In the case of the African city, quantitative data is often limited and, where it does exist, is problematic (Potts 2012). With the growing influence of postcolonial post-structural readings of everyday urbanism, there has been too much of an emphasis on the particularities of discursive structures, specific places and individuals without sufficient contextualization to provide a sense of the significance of the individual case. In the tenor of the broader argument of this chapter, there is room for both, and more importantly, collaborative research initiatives that seek to expand our understanding of both dimensions of complex and fast changing urban realities. In conclusion This chapter has deliberately avoided providing a list of research questions related to the numerous issues that we know little about or understand very poorly in the Africa context. Instead, I seek to locate the unique urbanization dynamics and prospects of the African city within a broader conceptual landscape of shifting epistemologies about contemporary urbanism with a view to provide a rich suggestive account of the fields of knowledge that we need to flesh out and better articulate. It is also important to think questions afresh about the politics of knowledge production, urbanism and methodological priorities to enable an elucidation of the African city both on its own terms and in a dynamic conversation with urbanists everywhere. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am grateful to the editor for his close reading of the chapter and helping me sharpen the argument. My research is supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa and Mistra Urban Futures. 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