This book explores the changing dynamics and challenges behind the rapid expanse of Africa's urban population. Africa's urban age is underway. With the world's fastest growing urban population, the continent is rapidly transforming from one that is largely rural, to one that is largely urban. Often facing limited budgets, those tasked with managing African cities require empirical evidence on the nature of demands for infrastructure, escalating environmental hazards, and ever-expanding informal settlements. Drawing on the work of the African Urban Research Initiative, this book brings together contributions from local researchers investigating key themes and challenges within their own contexts. An important example of urban knowledge co-production, the book demonstrates the regional diversity that can be seen as the main feature of African urbanism, with even well-accepted concepts such as informality manifesting in markedly different ways from place to place. Providing an important nuanced perspective on the heterogeneity of African cities and the challenges they face, this book will be an important resource for researchers across development studies, African studies, and urban studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003008385, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

This volume brings together a unique set of interventions from a variety of contributors to bridge the gap between research and policy with a distinct focus on Africa, drawing on work conducted as part of multiple interconnected research projects and networks on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and global policy implementation in African cities. Through the framework of the SDGs, and in particular Goal 11, the book aims to contribute to generating new knowledge about approaches to SDG localization that are grounded in complex and diverse local contexts, needs and realities, integrated perspectives and collaborative research.  The volume draws together contributions from urban experts from different professional and disciplinary backgrounds, ranging from the fields of governance, planning, data, sustainability, health and finance, to provide critical insight into the current dynamics, actors, blind spots, constraints and also good practices and opportunities for realizing the SDGs in Africa. Readers will gain detailed and informed insight into the African experience of SDG localization, monitoring and implementation based on multiple case studies, and will learn of the practices needed to accelerate action towards achieving the SDGs in urban contexts. This book will be of interest to researchers and planners focusing on SDGs implementation in Africa, as well as government organizations, development practitioners and students committed to long-term, inclusive sustainable and participatory development. This is an open access book. Chapters 1, 3, 6, 8, 11 and 14 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book explores the changing dynamics and challenges behind the rapid expanse of Africa's urban population. Africa's urban age is underway. With the world's fastest growing urban population, the continent is rapidly transforming from one that is largely rural, to one that is largely urban. Often facing limited budgets, those tasked with managing African cities require empirical evidence on the nature of demands for infrastructure, escalating environmental hazards, and ever-expanding informal settlements. Drawing on the work of the African Urban Research Initiative, this book brings together contributions from local researchers investigating key themes and challenges within their own contexts. An important example of urban knowledge co-production, the book demonstrates the regional diversity that can be seen as the main feature of African urbanism, with even well-accepted concepts such as informality manifesting in markedly different ways from place to place. Providing an important nuanced perspective on the heterogeneity of African cities and the challenges they face, this book will be an important resource for researchers across development studies, African studies, and urban studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003008385, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Reporting on the innovative, transdisciplinary research on sustainable urbanisation undertaken by Mistra Urban Futures, a highly influential research centre based in Sweden (2010-19), this book builds on the Policy Press title Rethinking Sustainable Cities to make a significant contribution to evolving theory about comparative urban research. Highlighting important methodological experiences from across a variety of diverse contexts in Africa and Europe, this book surveys key experiences and summarises lessons learned from the Mistra Urban Futures' global research platforms. It demonstrates best practice for developing and deploying different forms of transdisciplinary co-production, covering topics including neighbourhood transformation and housing justice, sustainable urban and transport development, urban food security and cultural heritage.

Case studies of metropolitan cities in nine African countries – from Egypt in the north to three in West and Central Africa, two in East Africa and three in Southern Africa – make up the empirical foundation of this publication.

The interrelated themes addressed in these chapters – the national influence on urban development, the popular dynamics that shape urban development and the global currents on urban development – make up its framework. All authors and editors are African, as is the publisher. The only exception is Göran Therborn whose recent book, Cities of Power, served as motivation for this volume. Accordingly, the issue common to all case studies is the often conflictual powers that are exercised by national, global and popular forces in the development of these African cities.

Rather than locating the case studies in an exclusively African historical context, the focus is on the trajectories of the postcolonial city (with the important exception of Addis Ababa with a non-colonial history that has granted it a special place in African consciousness). These trajectories enable comparisons with those of postcolonial cities on other continents. This, in turn, highlights the fact that Africa – today, the least urbanised continent on an increasingly urbanised globe – is in the thick of processes of large-scale urban transformation, illustrated in diverse ways by the case studies that make up the foundation of this publication.