"Many African urban dwellers have to find ways of making a living within cities dominated by powerful economic and political interests. This book explores how they negotiate the spatial practices, politico-economic processes and social relations that entangle place, identity and power in urban sites. While historically familiar links between countryside and city remain, these are constantly being reworked to give life to highly diverse urban formations. Meanwhile, African cities are being further fashioned through the geographically uneven dynamics of globalization. Institutional structures change rapidly, informal agreements flourish, and innovative ways of managing relationships are found. Urban change is not a process that easily managed or steered. What stability exists is itself the product of an enforced adaptation to instability." -- Publisher description.

Introduction : urban processes and change / Abdoumaliq Simone - Urban policies in Cairo / Benedicte Florin - Feasts : panoramas in town - Anna Madoeuf - Kisangani : a city at its lowest ebb / Jean Omasombo - The city centre : a shifting concept in the history of Addis Ababa / Bahru Zewde - At the limits of possibility : working notes on a relational model of urban policies / Edgar Pieterse - Life in a high-desity urban area : Anguwar Mai Gwado in Zaria / Mohammed-Bello Yunusa - Ethnicity and the dynamics of city politics : the case of Jos / Victor A. O. Adetula - Urban development and urban informalities: Pikine, Senegal / Mohamadou Abdoul - Formal and decentralized financing of housing : Operation 200,000 Houses, Marrakesh / Mohamed Gheris.