Fragile Cities: Fundamentals of Urban Life in East and Southern Africa

Deborah Fahy Bryceson
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Deborah Fahy Bryceson: African Studies Centre, Oxford University

Chapter 1 in African Urban Economies, 2006, pp 3-38 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Too often the ambiguities of early European urbanization are overlooked and early modern city growth is portrayed as the embodiment of Western economic and political progress and a model for the developing world today. It is in this light that Western donors have viewed the combination of urban demographic growth with economic malaise in Sub-Saharan Africa as perverse and attributable to urban political elites’ misguided policies and practices. Sub-Saharan Africa’s urbanization trend, amidst the doldrums of the last quarter of a century, is indeed puzzling. This book seeks to disentangle and contextualize the tenuous character of urban African economic life over the last half of the 20th century.

Keywords: Urban Growth; Municipal Government; Urban Dweller; African City; Colonial Government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-52301-2_1

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230523012_1

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