By 2050, African cities will host an additional 950 million people. Africa’s rapid urbanisation raises critical questions regarding access to land and resources, particularly for the “urban invisibles” – or those living in poverty. An estimated 60% of urban dwellers reside in slums or informal settlements and risk further marginalisation in the future. Urban slums or informal settlements in Africa are often deemed antithetical to the ‘modern’ city and therefore in need of erasure or upgrading. Likewise, the informal economy* is essential for the livelihoods of many urban dwellers and is threatened by urban regeneration projects in many cities around the world.

The exclusion and attempted annihilation of informality through formal planning processes is particularly evident under the neoliberal turn, instituted through structural adjustment programmes and international ‘best practice’. It constitutes a form of symbolic violence through the pathologisation of integral norms that govern urban transformation. We know that many informal settlers lose important social connections when moved to more “formal” accommodation often far from home and ill-adapted to their livelihoods. Against this background, scholars, such as Andres et. al, have called for a shift towards “responsible inclusive planning” in African cities.

This blog explores lessons from urban theory and practice to provide some food for thought for planners, policymakers and international organisations who wish to practice an alternative style of urbanism that challenges the dominance of Western values in African planning practice. The links featured throughout this blog provide more detail for those who wish to explore the topic further.        

Indeed,  there is a longstanding normative divide between Western cities and the “rest of the world” whereby First world “models” are often employed to address Third World “problems”. Jennifer Robinson’s seminal work urges urban practioners to consider all cities as “ordinary” – bridging the gap between the “developing” and the “modern” worlds so that everyone can learn from each other through the diversity of their respective realities. This sentiment must be at the heart of an inclusive planning system that promotes policy solutions informed by lived realities on the ground.

Likewise, it is important to acknowledge that the ‘African city’ does not constitute a neat or unproblematic model given the cultural, geographical, historical and political diversity within and between African countries. However, several complex and intrinsically linked urban dynamics can be distilled from a common history of colonisation and ‘post-colonial’ transition – notably, the legacy of a discriminatory planning apparatus; the centrality of the “informal”; complicated land tenure and governance conditions; the influence of global capital in defining development priorities; and competing pre-capitalist and capitalist logics.

African cities are therefore currently in the (post)colonial, “within and beyond” colonial structures and relationships. In order to untangle urbanism from its colonial history, we must question what it would mean to decolonise planning both normatively and practically. Australian academic Libby Porter suggests that we must renegotiate the structures of meaning surrounding notions of knowledge, power and agency by valuing indigenous knowledge and the intimate knowledge of urban challenges held by local residents. She highlights the act of active listening as an urgent political project when exploring the possibilities of decolonising the planning system in the settler state of Australia.

Meanwhile, Ananya Roy, like Tuck and Yang,  assert that decolonisation would require “a change in the world order” and the dismantling of structures that have supported colonial relationalities including slavery and imperialism. In the case of settler colonies, like Australia and the United States, decolonisation must bring about the repatriation of indigenous land and life rather than merely recognising the wrongs that have been committed. For Ananya Roy, decolonisation can therefore be seen more as a provocation than a possibility and prefers to refer to the ‘post-colony’ when analysing the future of planning in the United States.

While both Porter and Roy’s settler colonies differ from the African reality, they raise important questions about the possibilities of or limitations to “decolonising” planning systems that have been established during the colonial period but have endured after liberation. Moreover, urban planning and politics in Africa continues to be influenced and financed by international donors and nation states who participate in neo-imperialist agenda setting in accordance with their interests and value systems.

If we take a critical approach to decolonising the planning system, it seems almost impossible to fully deconstruct and re-set the current apparatus. Planners can, however, move towards unsettling the dominance of colonial and neo-imperialist narratives in a post-colonial context. Therefore, African cities could practice a planning that “goes against the grain” to set an agenda that invests in human capital and long-term profitability, that respects and embraces pre-capitalist traditions and social relations, rather than focusing on newness or the notion of the “modern”, “world-class” city.

This could be achieved through bottom-up processes that shift the focus to the everyday lives of urban dwellers that should not be considered “abjective victims” but “political actors” in their own right – capable of identifying incremental, practical policy solutions for their urban areas. In fact, one of the main critiques of urban planning in Africa is that it fails to learn from or include the realities of provisional urban worlds. Inclusive and participatory land use planning processes could be used to ensure a built environment that acknowledges both formal and informal land rights, securing tenure for disadvantaged groups.

Likewise, formal planning could embrace an aspect of flexibility that allows for more spontaneous activities. For example, planners and architects could work together with local populations to plan a built environment that facilitates informal activities such as street vending. Okoye urges planners to appreciate the “popular patronage” of street vending in designing mixed-use developments that blend “a variety of activities at the accessible street level”.

However, planners who want to champion local, incremental wins can move beyond state–society engagement based on participatory planning towards “a new place-based partnership between people and planning that will alter futures through releasing the transformative power of citizen-centric innovation.” In other words, planning should seek to empower and build capacity of community members to co-design and implement spatial plans: this more radical approach to planning is called co-production. Mostly notably, co-production enables communities to self-organise and to negotiate the rules or norms of institutional frameworks. Therefore, it chimes with the creation of a post-colonial model for planning that goes against the grain.

Another key element is its focus on operational rationalities that ensure successful implementation of projects by involving users in infrastructure and service provision to ensure implementation. Recent practice has shown that this experimental place-making is empowering residents to co-create the built environment through notions of assemblage that promote gradual development and learning. For instance, Vanesa Castan Broto et al.  have demonstrated how basic infrastructure such as water and waste management channels were successfully improved and maintained by local residents in Maputo, Mozambique with political and financial support from the central government environment fund (FUNAB).

Similarly, the urbaSEN association, based in Dakar, Senegal, has set up hundreds of community saving groups to facilitate the mapping and rehabilitation of precarious neighbourhoods. Mapping is a key tool for gaining legitimacy and making vulnerable populations visible to the state. They even established the first municipal planning office in Senegal to upskill the local community.       This highly localised collective place-making ensures that local communities become active agents of change. Moreover, these incremental and innovative approaches could lead to more sustainable outcomes.

However, many co-production projects take place outside the established governance structures, which raises essential questions about the responsibility of the state to urban populations in African cities. NGOs, such as Slum Dwellers International, with a wide network of communities from around the world, can lend a certain legitimacy to community projects seeking state aid or approval. Nevertheless, policymakers should actively seek to engage with communities participating in alternative or substitute place-making to address city challenges at scale and to enact reforms to integrate this more inclusive, responsible mode of planning into the larger city planning framework.

Further questions regarding funding and, more specifically, the mode of employment or remuneration of residents’ labour in co-producing these spaces will have to be addressed by national, regional or local governments who hope to responsibly reform their planning systems. After all residents that devote their time to building their community have less time to devote to earning a living.

In conclusion, there is no one best practice for building liveable, inclusive cities. However, implementing incremental, practical policy solutions co-created by those that have the most intimate knowledge of urban challenges is a good start. Planning pedagogy and training on the ground will of course play a central role in building capacity to facilitate alternative methodologies.

While this mode of inclusive planning has been envisaged for African cities, in line with Jennifer Robinson’s ordinary cities, valuable lessons can be drawn by planners and policymakers working in both the Global North and the Global South – it is my hope that co-production projects in various African cities will inspire careful and considered planning in cities elsewhere as planners embrace the knowledge of local communities to build sustainable, liveable cities.

*the ILO describes the ‘informal economy’ as “all economic activities by workers and economic units that are – in law or practice – not covered or insufficiently covered by formal arrangements”