Métropoles (Oct 2018)
Métropolisations en Afrique subsaharienne : au menu ou à la carte ?
Abstract
This paper presents and discusses some of the issues regarding research on large African cities. At first excluded from literature on the urban dimension of globalization due to the hegemony granted to the command and control functions of so-called Global Cities, they have been reintegrated for a decade into international comparisons and debates. This reintegration can be viewed at times as purely opportunistic, justifying the idea of an ’à la carte’ process of metropolization. Today, in tune with postcolonial positionings, a reconceptualization of the metropolization and of the metropolises of sub-Saharan Africa is taking place to capture the ambivalence of the processes currently developing. In the paper, we first examine the ways in which these large cities have been apprehended, recalling the evolution of the terminology over time and what it reveals in terms of the research priorities and the visions that drive them. Then we focus on urban forms and policies, questioning the existence of a specifically metropolitan urbanism in a context of major heterogeneity of the sub-Saharan metropolitan socio-systems. The central idea defended here is that of a necessary conceptualization of the composite and ambivalent character, both formal and informal, of the production, the functioning and the origins of the growth of large cities in sub-Saharan Africa. Lastly, this broad issue acknowledges the core problem that no existing urban theory allows us to properly understand the totality of the processes and forms at stake.
