TOPICS: AFRICAN CITIES in Fall 2024 (HI3091A)

In this class, students are asked to focus on the processes shaping the development of human settlements, and in particular on the cities of the African continent from the eighteenth century to the present. We will think firstly about the ways in which urbanism has been theorised before moving to our case studies. We will examine the earliest human settlements in different parts of Africa (urbanism of West Africa’s Middle Niger Delta, the Punic and Roman cities of the Mediterranean coast,) before moving to our two areas of focus: the cities of southern and south-west Africa and those of the Maghreb (north-west Africa) and Egypt. Some of our case studies (Fes, Cairo, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Windhoek) are often considered to be cities of extremes. The course thus has a strong comparative slant. In thematic terms, we will look at colonial-built environments, based on different forms of State-sponsored social separatism, the question of housing the masses, precarity and privilege, the mega city, capsularization, and urbicide. We are also concerned to think about how African diaspora populations have developed places for themselves abroad, and notably in Paris.