Myers - Urban Environments in Africa: A Critical Analysis of Environmental Politics

URBAN ENVIRONMENTS
IN AFRICA

A critical analysis of
environmental politics

Garth Myers

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

Policy Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK Tel +44 (0)117 954 5940 e-mail

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Policy Press 2016

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ISBN 978-1-4473-2292-4 paperback

ISBN 978-1-4473-2291-7 hardcover

ISBN 978-1-4473-2295-5 ePub

ISBN 978-1-4473-2296-2 Mobi

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(people who live in shacks), the radical shack-dwellers movement in South Africa (Zulu)

urban administrative level in Senegal; smaller units within each arrondissement are called communes darrondissement (French)

suburb; in Africa, the term often has negative connotations (French)

tin-can town, a term sometimes used for informal settlements (French)

rotational bush-fallow agriculture of Zambia (Bemba)

a seasonally flooded grassy depression (Chinyanja-Chichewa)

three acres (Swahili)

spirits; local branch units in the Yen a Marre movement in Senegal (French)

discord (Swahili)

Sclerophyllous Mediterranean scrub biome of the Western Cape, South Africa (Afrikaans)

the Swahili spirit world in Zanzibar

ritual spirit group in Zanzibar

to make-believe or imagine (Swahili)

lowland wetlands (Zanzibari Swahili)

term used for mini-bus in Nairobi

stony coral bushlands in Unguja (Zanzibari Swahili)

Central African woodland dominated by Brachystegia Isoberlinia and Julbernardia

in the city (Swahili)

Central African woodland dominated by Acacia, Combretum, and Afrormosia

drum or dance; also rituals of affliction (Swahili)

Be Clean/Make Clean; a Senegalese youth environmental group (Wolof)

Zanzibari Swahili term for plantation, farm, or countryside

(from: Umma wa Wapanda Baisekeli, or Bicycle Riders Society), a bicycling and environmental activist group in Dar es Salaam.

grassland and low bush country of Unguja (Zanzibari Swahili)

Enough Is Enough; We Are Sick of It; a Senegalese movement (French)

Garth Myers is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Urban International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA. He is director of the urban studies program and a member of the international studies program. He is the author of three other books on urban Africa and co-editor of two other volumes; he has also published more than 60 articles and book chapters.

When I began to think about and write this book in 2012, I called it my tree book. I felt that not enough had been written about trees, and nature more broadly, in cities of sub-Saharan Africa. I would jokingly tell people that I wanted to get away from always writing about political things in urban Africa. I could have chapters on dirt, water, air, and animals to go along with the trees (And I thank Morten Nielsen for that idea!). But of course, I knew, from the beginning, even the treesalong with the dirt, water, air, and animalsare political in the cities of Africa, as they are anywhere, even (or maybe especially) in the cities of Connecticut, where I live, or Pennsylvania (Penns Woods, after all), where I grew up. I also became steadily humbled by the staggering productivity of my world of colleagues studying urban Africa and its environments. Carlos Nunez Silva at the University of Lisbon, creator of the African Urban Planning Research Network (AUPRN), deserves specific mention in this regard. AUPRN has proved an invaluable source of information on the growing wealth of research relevant to urban environments in Africa. The African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town should also be highlighted in this same regard as arguably the continents finest center for urban research, along with the Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group in Bamenda, Cameroon, whose publications have been quite inspirational.